It actually includes methods for both prebuilt binaries ("bottles" in homebrew terminology) and source. It will use a bottle if one exists for your OS version,

It actually includes methods for both prebuilt binaries ("bottles" in homebrew terminology) and source. It will use a bottle if one exists for your OS version, but you can force installation from source with "--build-from-source". The problem of bitwise-identical / deterministic builds is difficult when using most legacy tooling, in particular tools that insert timestamps or other non-determinism. Bitcoin and Tor use Gitian https://gitian.org/ https://gitian.org/ and Google just open sourced their tool, Bazel http://bazel.io/ http://bazel.io/