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I’ve switched over to devbox, which is a thin, easy to use wrapper around Nix on osx. Haven’t had to install brew yet. Brew was simple in theory but I always ra

by cglan 2y ago

I’ve switched over to devbox, which is a thin, easy to use wrapper around Nix on osx. Haven’t had to install brew yet. Brew was simple in theory but I always ran into so many issues like this, or just various packages polluting everything. Fingers crossed I don’t have to go back As someone who hates tinkering with this kinda stuff, I’m surprised how well it works so far

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
MacPorts is a great alternative, also way older but never has been as successful as Homebrew.
- zdw 2y ago
  Second recommendation for MacPorts It predates Homebrew by a bit and is under Apple's http://www.macosforge.org http://www.macosforge.org umbrella of OSS projects, so as close to 1st party support as you can get.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    Third one for macports. It's more sane, at least for multi users support (I create an user for each contract work)
  - gkoller 2y ago
    MacPorts rocks. No ports breaking when upgrading MacOS as can (or could,not sure if that's still an issue) with Brew.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - iforgotmysocks 2y ago
    It seems like Apple also closely work with Homebrew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708046#41711168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708046#41711168
- quesera 2y ago
  MacPorts is great! Another excellent alternative is pkgsrc: https://pkgsrc.smartos.org/install-on-macos/ https://pkgsrc.smartos.org/install-on-macos/ I've used pkgsrc on SmartOS/illumos and NetBSD for many years, but this is my first time using it on macOS -- about 18 months now, and all experiences positive!
- zombot 2y ago
  Homebrew is really the worst of all the options on macOS, I wonder how it became so popular in the first place.
vbezhenar 2y ago
My issues with homebrew are: 1. I hate the concept of dependency management. I want every package to ship with all dependencies inside. Just download tarball, extract and that's about it. 2. homebrew often wants to install things I already have, like python. 3. No easy way to install old packages. I don't understand why things are made harder than they should be.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Dependencies are totally out of control, in much of OSS, not just Homebrew. I probably have 5-6 leaf node packages that I actually installed with brew install, but brew list shows close to 100 little dependencies. Same with apt on my Ubuntu/Debian systems. I physically installed a handful of applications but my system has hundreds of packages installed. At least it’s not DLL Hell: the dependency management tools are great and uninstallation is clean, but wow what an explosion of quantity of dependencies! I don’t use node but I understand it’s a mess there too.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    But it's nice to reuse code
    - happymellon 2y ago
      Isn't it nice to reuse code so you dont have to write it twice? It doesn't mean we can't run it twice.
  - eric-hu 2y ago
    There’s command to see your leaf dependencies: https://docs.brew.sh/Manpage#leaves---installed-on-request---installed-as-dependency https://docs.brew.sh/Manpage#leaves---installed-on-request--...
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Yep I use that a lot. I like to make sure I only have installed what I need to survive, and uninstall everything else.
zamalek 2y ago
What I have learned from Nix is that polluting the global (user or system) environment is going to spell disaster at some point. Its obviously fixable in an obvious way, but why subject yourself to this nonsense in the first place. The only stuff I have in my global env is stuff I could actually use from almost anywhere, even non-code directories. Nix isn't the only tool that solves this, there is acme and even per-compiler tools like nvm or cargo.
zombot 2y ago
In case it shouldn't work out, I never had any problems with MacPorts. I will have a look at devbox. I always found Nix on macOS too much hassle, maybe the situation has gotten better?
drcongo 2y ago
I just switched over to devbox after reading this thread, I like it a lot so far, thanks.

by cglan 2y ago

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago

MacPorts is a great alternative, also way older but never has been as successful as Homebrew.

zdw 2y ago
Second recommendation for MacPorts It predates Homebrew by a bit and is under Apple's http://www.macosforge.org http://www.macosforge.org umbrella of OSS projects, so as close to 1st party support as you can get.
- skydhash 2y ago
  Third one for macports. It's more sane, at least for multi users support (I create an user for each contract work)
- gkoller 2y ago
  MacPorts rocks. No ports breaking when upgrading MacOS as can (or could,not sure if that's still an issue) with Brew.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- iforgotmysocks 2y ago
  It seems like Apple also closely work with Homebrew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708046#41711168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708046#41711168
quesera 2y ago
MacPorts is great! Another excellent alternative is pkgsrc: https://pkgsrc.smartos.org/install-on-macos/ https://pkgsrc.smartos.org/install-on-macos/ I've used pkgsrc on SmartOS/illumos and NetBSD for many years, but this is my first time using it on macOS -- about 18 months now, and all experiences positive!
zombot 2y ago
Homebrew is really the worst of all the options on macOS, I wonder how it became so popular in the first place.

vbezhenar 2y ago

My issues with homebrew are: 1. I hate the concept of dependency management. I want every package to ship with all dependencies inside. Just download tarball, extract and that's about it. 2. homebrew often wants to install things I already have, like python. 3. No easy way to install old packages. I don't understand why things are made harder than they should be.

ryandrake 2y ago
Dependencies are totally out of control, in much of OSS, not just Homebrew. I probably have 5-6 leaf node packages that I actually installed with brew install, but brew list shows close to 100 little dependencies. Same with apt on my Ubuntu/Debian systems. I physically installed a handful of applications but my system has hundreds of packages installed. At least it’s not DLL Hell: the dependency management tools are great and uninstallation is clean, but wow what an explosion of quantity of dependencies! I don’t use node but I understand it’s a mess there too.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  But it's nice to reuse code
  - happymellon 2y ago
    Isn't it nice to reuse code so you dont have to write it twice? It doesn't mean we can't run it twice.
- eric-hu 2y ago
  There’s command to see your leaf dependencies: https://docs.brew.sh/Manpage#leaves---installed-on-request---installed-as-dependency https://docs.brew.sh/Manpage#leaves---installed-on-request--...
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Yep I use that a lot. I like to make sure I only have installed what I need to survive, and uninstall everything else.

zamalek 2y ago

What I have learned from Nix is that polluting the global (user or system) environment is going to spell disaster at some point. Its obviously fixable in an obvious way, but why subject yourself to this nonsense in the first place. The only stuff I have in my global env is stuff I could actually use from almost anywhere, even non-code directories. Nix isn't the only tool that solves this, there is acme and even per-compiler tools like nvm or cargo.

zombot 2y ago

In case it shouldn't work out, I never had any problems with MacPorts. I will have a look at devbox. I always found Nix on macOS too much hassle, maybe the situation has gotten better?

drcongo 2y ago

I just switched over to devbox after reading this thread, I like it a lot so far, thanks.