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Programming

Homebrew 2.0 is Here With Official Support For Linux and Windows (brew.sh) 76

Homebrew, a popular package manager for macOS, has released version 2.0 with official support for Linux and Windows 10 (with Windows Subsystem Linux). Cross-platform setup scripts just got a whole lot easier. Other highlights: Homebrew does not run on OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) and below. For 10.4 - 10.6 support, see Tigerbrew. This has allowed us to remove large amounts of legacy code.
Homebrew does not migrate old, pre-1.0.0 installations from the Homebrew/legacy-homebrew (formerly Homebrew/homebrew repository. This has allowed us to delete legacy code that dealt with migrations from old versions.
Homebrew does not have any formulae with options in Homebrew/homebrew-core. Options will still be supported and encouraged by third-party taps. This change allows us to better focus on delivering binary packages rather than options. Formulae with options had to be built from source, could not be tested on our CI system and provided a disproportionate support burden on our volunteer maintainers.

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Homebrew 2.0 is Here With Official Support For Linux and Windows

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  • by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Sunday February 03, 2019 @03:33PM (#58064822)

    they should give it replaceble themed metaphor names for it's cute naming of steps
    Instead of just, Cellar, and brewing, and ....

    one could come up with more edgy or more cute names. Perhaps a Football theme, or BDSM theme or Cat lover theme.

    Other than that does anything distinguish Homebrew?

    it seems like every 5 years the distro that's the least broken and least hassle fluctuates

    for a while it was Fink., then Macports, then back to Fink. THen back to mac ports. Then homebrew.

    Over the last while homebrew has been pretty consistently good so I've not had to go back to one of the others.

    Currently however, being heavily into python now, I use anaconda for everything Anaconda can supply and then only then reach for the homebrew.

    What I like about some of these is that maintain their own diractory like /opt/sw or the brew directory , and don't poison your /usr tree. This makes trashing them and re-installing a bitrotted crufty install easy to fix. I also like that I can even do user level installs for some of these.

    But my favorite by far is anaconda with its environments to keep the vegetables from touching on my plate. If someone could expand anaconda to gobble up all of homebrew this would be perfect.

    • some features I particularly like about anaconda are

      1. it makes reversions much more simple and reliable. SO if you install something and later find you need to downgrade, it can walk back all the dendencies.

      2. It does the best job of solving mutal dependencies i've seen. if you install one package that also installs say the latest version of Latex, then late install a package but it requires an older LAtex, it can find some combination of Latex and all it's dependencies that let you run all your install

  • I’ve stayed away (Score:5, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday February 03, 2019 @03:47PM (#58064882)

    I’m not sure their security model is fully baked. They claim sudo is bad; but their solution seems to be making /user/local/bin writable to everybody (and if you try to avoid this permissions change using sudo, homebrew will block it). And while they claim /user/local/bin is only the “preferred” install location, if you attempt to use a different directory you quickly find many basic things will break - so there’s no good way around this.

    • Yiii! Really? I'm impressed that something that bad is available. It sounds as if it should only be run in a VM, if then.

    • One of the many reasons I was glad to leave OSX was to be done with the lousy package management solutions. I am grateful for them, they were better than nothing, but there are so many better options on Linux.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        macports is based on BSD ports. ports is phenomenal, thus so is macports, even with their limitied support (limitied personel). Homebrew is trendy, but a binary installer, and it's momentum is from irrational popularity. The term "brewnistas" is appropriate. They remind me of the "penguinistas" from the early naughts, when linux was a mess (well, it still is) and too unstable and NOT ready for the prod servers, but the fanatics could not be tamed. Eventually, of course, linux got stable, but I can't see wha

    • by ruurd ( 761243 )
      Simply untrue. Just checked. /usr/local/bin is not world or group writable.
      • Simply untrue. Just checked. /usr/local/bin is not world or group writable.

        Then it is owned by you rather than root - correct? That’s slightly less awful but still not good.

    • Homebrew's security model is half-baked, if that, and they justify it with lame rhetoric ("Why does Homebrew say sudo is bad? Sudo is dangerous, and you installed TextMate.app without sudo anyway.") Uhm, pointing out that TextMate installs itself poorly on an OS itself that has a half-baked approach to multi-user applications is... lazy at best, and incompetent at worst.

      The best workaround I've found is to create a security group called something appropriate (like "local"), and assign your user to that gr

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Curious... maybe the newer versions of TextMate don't work properly? I certainly had to provide sudo credentials to install the TextMate command line tools in /usr/local/bin.

        If they mean installing the app package itself, Homebrew could also choose to store it's stuff in a user writable location.

  • MacOS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Sunday February 03, 2019 @03:56PM (#58064912)
    Brew is a hacked solution that was created because MacOS sucks. What is the point of bringing it to other OSes that already solved these problems a long time ago.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And the package management solution on Windows is...?

      • by dmt0 ( 1295725 )

        And the package management solution on Windows is...?

        Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/)
        Not saying it's great or better than what's on Linux, but it's definitely better than nothing.

        • by guruevi ( 827432 )

          Chocolatey is highly reliant on .NET and PowerShell (v4). It doesn't work on XP and is all around lousy on Windows Vista, 7 and 8. 10 is workable but it requires you trusting someone else to package/publish binaries, it also requires you to 'trust' the environment and will often break whenever your Windows environment isn't what the packager has assumed.

          Although this seems to be normal to accept from deployment scenarios within the Windows ecosystem (such as SCCM and other commercial offerings), Brew (can)

      • Chocolatey for win32 apps, apt for Ubuntu/wsl.

    • Yeah came here to say that.

      I've found homebrew to be, well, it's better than macports, but that's not saying much. And macports was better than nothing, so homebrew is at least twice as good as nothing! On the other hand it somehow seems less good than what's available on Linux. The compile from source model is also just a bit on the annoyingly slow side. Kind of like gentoo, but with less of the funroll overtones.

      Might bo OK on Windows though, that doesn't have well established package managers like Linux.

    • by ruurd ( 761243 )
      Blaaaah blaaaah blaaaah just hijack the thread for your uninformed and meritless opinions.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      What is a good solution for Windows?

      Chocolatey seems to be the most popular, but it's support for portable apps is quite poor.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday February 03, 2019 @04:00PM (#58064922)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by PhunkySchtuff ( 208108 ) <kai&automatica,com,au> on Sunday February 03, 2019 @04:38PM (#58065048) Homepage

      This project got momentum by trashing on MacPorts, although MacPorts has always worked fine for me. Homebrew will never be on my system, simply because of their shabby treatment of a good port system written by very good people.

      Not only is this poor form to trash the competition - I don't know that the competition even deserve this trashing. I've been using MacPorts since it was DarwinPorts. I've never experienced it not working, or doing anything that I didn't expect it to. In the early days there may have been some software that simply wasn't ported over, but it's always behaved itself when I've been using it.

    • by nawcom ( 941663 )

      I've preferred MacPorts/DarwinPorts because it's very similar to BSD Ports in regards to it using libraries separate from the base install, unlike the way homebrew works in regards to a number of libraries. Also MacPorts has gone a long way when it comes to having precompiled packages ready. I remember the 10.6 days and how much you compiled but now - 95% (my personal estimate) of the dependencies and target ports you're trying to install has precompiled packages for your specific Darwin version ready to go

    • This project got momentum by trashing on MacPorts, although MacPorts has always worked fine for me.

      I never had luck with macports. I found it would work for a few months, then screw up and need a reinstall. Since it was compile from source that was an overnighter.

      Technically I found it flawed. I didn't catch any drama regarding it but there's not really an excuse for that.

      And for some silly reason, they decided to put everything in /usr/local

      yep.

  • by Bradmont ( 513167 ) on Sunday February 03, 2019 @04:00PM (#58064924) Homepage
    What Linux distro does this target? The only one without an existing (and better) package management system is Slackware... and it's that way because the users want it that way...
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Slackware with SlackBuilds.org and Sbopkg is already better thanks

  • Because there is a serious dearth of package infrastructures under Linux. While you are at it, come up with a new terminal emulator as well.
  • Homebrew does not speak or respond to voice commands.
    Homebrew does not have configuration with selections in alpha-qanon distributions
    Homebrew does not have a cape or exhibit any special powers.
    Homebrew does not have any selection to induce Hypo-package virtualization symmetry.
    Homebrew does not require refrigeration.
    Homebrew does not taste particularly good and should not be eaten.
    Homebrew does not emit harmful rays or other quanta with this release and shielding is no longer necessary.
    Homebrew does

  • Always when I read "major news" like this I feel a bit sad not having polished and pusedh this more in our T2 SDE Linux cross compile emebdded scripting source meta distribution thing: https://t2sde.org/ [t2sde.org] I compiled to macOS a decade ago to "emerge" Subversion from source and such, 2005/2006 time frame. I even used it to compile some MinGW runtime thing, to cross compile some of my code and test programs to Windows executables. Guess now w/ my new YouTube ad funded effort I could polish this more up again f
  • I thought installing applications on a Mac was simply "copy the directory and your software is installed". Why the fuck would you need a package manager on Mac?

  • Homebrew was already a very nice way to install GNU and other open source stuff. But Cask is an extension that scripts the installation of packaged software:
    https://caskroom.io/ [caskroom.io]

    Plus, if you install the mas command-line utility to install App Store stuff, this makes it easy to completely script the installation of a Mac. The following shell script installs a fresh new Mac for me:


    #!/bin/sh
    export HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS="--appdir=/Applications"

    # install homebrew
    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent... [githubusercontent.com]

  • Lots of "homebrew does not..." in those highlights, no?

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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