4 ms·

Context for those unaware: the commenter, mikemcquaid, is the project lead for Homebrew.

by runjake 7mo ago

Xunjin 7mo ago
Thank you, his arguments totally makes sense, only the part that makes me icky is: > There’s a new vibe coded Homebrew frontend with partial compatibility and improved speed every few weeks. People are free and probably do this because it is slow. Alternatives often are not a bad thing.
- huflungdung 7mo ago
  [dead]
- runjake 7mo ago
  Point noted! I took it as a tongue-in-cheek phrasing of "agentically coded". Hopefully, that's right.
- alwillis 7mo ago
  Since I enabled HOMEBREW_DOWNLOAD_CONCURRENCY, downloads have improved for me to the point where download speed is no longer an issue.
  - brailsafe 7mo ago
    Good to know! I was doing this with a hacky one-liner but wasn't aware of this flag. I think the sequential build/install process is the agonizing bit though.
  - firecall 7mo ago
    If your version is 5.0.0 or newer, concurrency is already active by default. https://brew.sh/2025/11/12/homebrew-5.0.0/ https://brew.sh/2025/11/12/homebrew-5.0.0/
    - pugio 7mo ago
      Thanks for that. And here I was somehow hanging around on 4.5.3.
  - naikrovek 7mo ago
    Yeah I don’t know how people are saying it’s slow. If you have 5000 packages installed maybe?
- jazzpush2 7mo ago
  Yeah, tbh homebrew is slow as fuck. It literally took 30 minutes to install aws cli on my 2020 mbp. I will happily flock to every new version that's faster.
- mpalmer 7mo ago
  I don't see where he said it's a bad thing, or even implied it. As I see it, he did imply that superlatives like THE FASTEST PACKAGE MANAGER aren't worth much in this environment.
- rbanffy 7mo ago
  > Alternatives often are not a bad thing. Exactly. I’ve been using MacPorts for ages and I love it. /me ducks.
- bentcorner 7mo ago
  > People are free and probably do this because it is slow. Alternatives often are not a bad thing. Alternatives are always good but IMO brew is just not something I interact with all that much and to me it's "good enough". It works and does what I expect, although to be fair maybe I'm on the happy path <shrug>.
- mikemcquaid 7mo ago
  Indeed, everyone's free to do what they want, that's the beauty of open source. I have zero issues with people vibe coding alternative Homebrew frontends, it's good for the ecosystem for there to be more experimentation. What I take objection to is when one or more of these happen: - incorrect compatibility claims are made (e.g. if you're not running Ruby, no post-install blocks in formulae are gonna work) - synthetic benchmarks are used to demonstrate speed (e.g. running `brew reinstall openssl` in a loop is not a terribly representative case, instead a e.g. cold `brew upgrade` of >10 packages would be). to be clear, I'm sure most of these projects are faster than Homebrew in fair benchmarks too! - incorrect claims about why Homebrew is slow are made (e.g. "we do concurrent downloads and Homebrew doesn't": true a year ago, not true since 5.0.0 in November 2025) - it's pitched as a "replacement for Homebrew" rather than "an alternative frontend for Homebrew" when it's entirely reliant on our infrastructure, maintainers, update process, API, etc. Even on the above: of course people are free to do whatever they want! It's just at least some of the above hinders rather than helps the ecosystem and makes it harder rather than easier for us as a wider open source ecosystem to solve the problem "Homebrew is slow" (which, to be clear, it is in many cases).
  - steve-atx-7600 7mo ago
    Thanks for all the hard work. I think brew is what makes the Mac the best “unix” machine choice as far as being stable and not having to take up maintaining my OS as a multi-hour per week hobby. I have been using it daily for three years and have never had any problems.
  - Xunjin 7mo ago
    Thank you for the answer now it made more clearer, at least for me, on what you meant. And to be fair, when I was at 4.x version, 90% of the time I was in the happy path, my "being slow" issue was when download speeds got really bad, sometimes caused by my ISP, so my end. As others mentioned, homebrew is a great piece of software, thank you, not only you but everyone who maintains it.
  - pjjpo 7mo ago
    While I have some vague recollection of homebrew feeling slow in the past I don't know when - I want to say well before Nov 2025. And recently absolutely no such feeling, and great features like auto update handling, etc just working. It's really good stuff. Python has powered Linux package management to reasonable result for a long time, Python itself is ironic for having tricky platform constraints that ended up being best solved with uv's excellent rust solver. For homebrew I would personally not stress over a Rust frontend - but if it keeps some of the FUD out then maybe it's worth it!
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

Context for those unaware: the commenter, mikemcquaid, is the project lead for Homebrew.

by runjake 7mo ago

Context for those unaware: the commenter, mikemcquaid, is the project lead for Homebrew.

Thank you, his arguments totally makes sense, only the part that makes me icky is: > There’s a new vibe coded Homebrew frontend with partial compatibility and improved speed every few weeks. People are free and probably do this because it is slow. Alternatives often are not a bad thing.

huflungdung 7mo ago
[dead]
runjake 7mo ago
Point noted! I took it as a tongue-in-cheek phrasing of "agentically coded". Hopefully, that's right.
alwillis 7mo ago
Since I enabled HOMEBREW_DOWNLOAD_CONCURRENCY, downloads have improved for me to the point where download speed is no longer an issue.
- brailsafe 7mo ago
  Good to know! I was doing this with a hacky one-liner but wasn't aware of this flag. I think the sequential build/install process is the agonizing bit though.
- firecall 7mo ago
  If your version is 5.0.0 or newer, concurrency is already active by default. https://brew.sh/2025/11/12/homebrew-5.0.0/ https://brew.sh/2025/11/12/homebrew-5.0.0/
  - pugio 7mo ago
    Thanks for that. And here I was somehow hanging around on 4.5.3.
- naikrovek 7mo ago
  Yeah I don’t know how people are saying it’s slow. If you have 5000 packages installed maybe?
jazzpush2 7mo ago
Yeah, tbh homebrew is slow as fuck. It literally took 30 minutes to install aws cli on my 2020 mbp. I will happily flock to every new version that's faster.
mpalmer 7mo ago
I don't see where he said it's a bad thing, or even implied it. As I see it, he did imply that superlatives like THE FASTEST PACKAGE MANAGER aren't worth much in this environment.
rbanffy 7mo ago
> Alternatives often are not a bad thing. Exactly. I’ve been using MacPorts for ages and I love it. /me ducks.
bentcorner 7mo ago
> People are free and probably do this because it is slow. Alternatives often are not a bad thing. Alternatives are always good but IMO brew is just not something I interact with all that much and to me it's "good enough". It works and does what I expect, although to be fair maybe I'm on the happy path <shrug>.
mikemcquaid 7mo ago
Indeed, everyone's free to do what they want, that's the beauty of open source. I have zero issues with people vibe coding alternative Homebrew frontends, it's good for the ecosystem for there to be more experimentation. What I take objection to is when one or more of these happen: - incorrect compatibility claims are made (e.g. if you're not running Ruby, no post-install blocks in formulae are gonna work) - synthetic benchmarks are used to demonstrate speed (e.g. running `brew reinstall openssl` in a loop is not a terribly representative case, instead a e.g. cold `brew upgrade` of >10 packages would be). to be clear, I'm sure most of these projects are faster than Homebrew in fair benchmarks too! - incorrect claims about why Homebrew is slow are made (e.g. "we do concurrent downloads and Homebrew doesn't": true a year ago, not true since 5.0.0 in November 2025) - it's pitched as a "replacement for Homebrew" rather than "an alternative frontend for Homebrew" when it's entirely reliant on our infrastructure, maintainers, update process, API, etc. Even on the above: of course people are free to do whatever they want! It's just at least some of the above hinders rather than helps the ecosystem and makes it harder rather than easier for us as a wider open source ecosystem to solve the problem "Homebrew is slow" (which, to be clear, it is in many cases).
- steve-atx-7600 7mo ago
  Thanks for all the hard work. I think brew is what makes the Mac the best “unix” machine choice as far as being stable and not having to take up maintaining my OS as a multi-hour per week hobby. I have been using it daily for three years and have never had any problems.
- Xunjin 7mo ago
  Thank you for the answer now it made more clearer, at least for me, on what you meant. And to be fair, when I was at 4.x version, 90% of the time I was in the happy path, my "being slow" issue was when download speeds got really bad, sometimes caused by my ISP, so my end. As others mentioned, homebrew is a great piece of software, thank you, not only you but everyone who maintains it.
- pjjpo 7mo ago
  While I have some vague recollection of homebrew feeling slow in the past I don't know when - I want to say well before Nov 2025. And recently absolutely no such feeling, and great features like auto update handling, etc just working. It's really good stuff. Python has powered Linux package management to reasonable result for a long time, Python itself is ironic for having tricky platform constraints that ended up being best solved with uv's excellent rust solver. For homebrew I would personally not stress over a Rust frontend - but if it keeps some of the FUD out then maybe it's worth it!

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]