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> homebrew is pretty great I hear this said a lot in passing, and I'm really curious what people mean when they say this.

kowlo 3y ago
Perhaps they are talking about Homebrew the package manager [1]. [1] https://brew.sh https://brew.sh
- hamandcheese 3y ago
  I wonder what people mean when they say "Homebrew is pretty great", I do not wonder what they mean when they say "Homebrew".
  - orf 3y ago
    They mean that they have an overall positive opinion of Homebrew, more than “not bad” but less than “amazing”.
    - dividedbyzero 3y ago
      As someone who would readily say that Homebrew is pretty great, this is exactly how I feel about Homebrew.
  - hizanberg 3y ago
    It does what it says on the tin and installs the plethora of software available on homebrew with a simple command, which is pretty great
  - anonymoushn 3y ago
    For example people do not use homebrew to install python3 on a fresh install of mac os and get a python that spews a bunch of messages to stderr about the version of libc6.so and cannot speak TLS.
    - sofixa 3y ago
      It only upgrades PostgreSQL 3 major versions up alongside without asking.
      - eviks 3y ago
        Think this issue was fixed a few years ago
        sofixa 3y ago
        Not sure I agree, when I use brew it still regularly updates random unconnected crap through multiple major releases. And of course it takes ages doing so
        eviks 3y ago
        I was referring to your postgresql example, those became rudimentary @versioned packages
      - nraf 3y ago
        [dead]
  - pdpi 3y ago
    It's plenty solid, and there's a good library of packages on there. It's a package manager, doesn't take more than that.
tomduncalf 3y ago
I mean, it installs stuff more or less reliably for me so I’d say that’s pretty great. I’m sure it has issues (I’ve had problems trying to install old versions of packages for example) but I don’t think I’ve ever had “brew install <whatever>” fail to install what I wanted
rafaelmn 3y ago
I can use it to get stuff I need to do work and I don't remember the last time I couldn't. Upgrades sometimes leave me broken but it's usually ironed out fast because everyone is using it. If my dependencies are that locked down I'm using docker and special environments anyway. Linux can get tedious with upgrades breaking or dependency mismatches. Homebrew is probably the largest homogenous community - if you're doing something relatively popular there will be a lot of noise when stuff breaks. Linux is spread out across various distros/repos/package managers, overlap of users with your problem is a lot smaller. Beats all the package management experiences I've had on Windows, admittedly I have not tried to use Windows for work for >1 year.
- nightfader 3y ago
  Homebrew is available for Linux as well since approx 3yrs now. I've been using it without issues https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux
  - rafaelmn 3y ago
    OK but what I like about homebrew on mac is that when I'm having an issue with "popular stack X broke after updating" it's probably me and >10k other people out there, so by the time I hit the problem it's already under investigation on GH. I'm not sure the same would apply to homebrew on Linux - even if you ignore the differences between distros - how popular is homebrew on linux and linux desktop in comparison ?
    - jmbwell 3y ago
      I wish more of those 10k people would help get others off of a package manager that is so fragile and convoluted that updating so often leads to popular things breaking. Things like macports and pkgsrc do things in an arguably much simpler, more unixy way, without the contortions that so often seem to leave homebrew in a bind after routine operations like updating.
      - 3y ago
licebmi__at__ 3y ago
The experience is really seamless, mostly it just works… which IMO is nothing special as they mostly support installing the latest and maybe a couple of other versions, and software that requires weird stuff will likely be packaged in a self contained way.
jmbwell 3y ago
They mean they haven’t tried another package manager for Mac, like pkgsrc or macports.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I switched to it after using both Fink and macports and it was the first time I felt like I had a package manager as reliable to apt on Linux. Both Macports and Fink would routinely break my whole system by putting extra versions of system libraries where other applications could find them. Since, I’ve switched to nix.

kowlo 3y ago

Perhaps they are talking about Homebrew the package manager [1]. [1] https://brew.sh https://brew.sh

hamandcheese 3y ago
I wonder what people mean when they say "Homebrew is pretty great", I do not wonder what they mean when they say "Homebrew".
- orf 3y ago
  They mean that they have an overall positive opinion of Homebrew, more than “not bad” but less than “amazing”.
  - dividedbyzero 3y ago
    As someone who would readily say that Homebrew is pretty great, this is exactly how I feel about Homebrew.
- hizanberg 3y ago
  It does what it says on the tin and installs the plethora of software available on homebrew with a simple command, which is pretty great
- anonymoushn 3y ago
  For example people do not use homebrew to install python3 on a fresh install of mac os and get a python that spews a bunch of messages to stderr about the version of libc6.so and cannot speak TLS.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    It only upgrades PostgreSQL 3 major versions up alongside without asking.
    - eviks 3y ago
      Think this issue was fixed a few years ago
      - sofixa 3y ago
        Not sure I agree, when I use brew it still regularly updates random unconnected crap through multiple major releases. And of course it takes ages doing so
        eviks 3y ago
        I was referring to your postgresql example, those became rudimentary @versioned packages
    - nraf 3y ago
      [dead]
- pdpi 3y ago
  It's plenty solid, and there's a good library of packages on there. It's a package manager, doesn't take more than that.

tomduncalf 3y ago

I mean, it installs stuff more or less reliably for me so I’d say that’s pretty great. I’m sure it has issues (I’ve had problems trying to install old versions of packages for example) but I don’t think I’ve ever had “brew install <whatever>” fail to install what I wanted

rafaelmn 3y ago

I can use it to get stuff I need to do work and I don't remember the last time I couldn't. Upgrades sometimes leave me broken but it's usually ironed out fast because everyone is using it. If my dependencies are that locked down I'm using docker and special environments anyway. Linux can get tedious with upgrades breaking or dependency mismatches. Homebrew is probably the largest homogenous community - if you're doing something relatively popular there will be a lot of noise when stuff breaks. Linux is spread out across various distros/repos/package managers, overlap of users with your problem is a lot smaller. Beats all the package management experiences I've had on Windows, admittedly I have not tried to use Windows for work for >1 year.

nightfader 3y ago
Homebrew is available for Linux as well since approx 3yrs now. I've been using it without issues https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux
- rafaelmn 3y ago
  OK but what I like about homebrew on mac is that when I'm having an issue with "popular stack X broke after updating" it's probably me and >10k other people out there, so by the time I hit the problem it's already under investigation on GH. I'm not sure the same would apply to homebrew on Linux - even if you ignore the differences between distros - how popular is homebrew on linux and linux desktop in comparison ?
  - jmbwell 3y ago
    I wish more of those 10k people would help get others off of a package manager that is so fragile and convoluted that updating so often leads to popular things breaking. Things like macports and pkgsrc do things in an arguably much simpler, more unixy way, without the contortions that so often seem to leave homebrew in a bind after routine operations like updating.
    - 3y ago

licebmi__at__ 3y ago

The experience is really seamless, mostly it just works… which IMO is nothing special as they mostly support installing the latest and maybe a couple of other versions, and software that requires weird stuff will likely be packaged in a self contained way.

jmbwell 3y ago

They mean they haven’t tried another package manager for Mac, like pkgsrc or macports.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I switched to it after using both Fink and macports and it was the first time I felt like I had a package manager as reliable to apt on Linux. Both Macports and Fink would routinely break my whole system by putting extra versions of system libraries where other applications could find them. Since, I’ve switched to nix.