Funnily Mise does not support dependencies, and I was quite surprised that it mostly doesn't matter, as either pnpm/uv handles that, or it's a static binary that just works. In the past, had the unfortunate experience of packaging a Python application for Homebrew (the ridiculous process involved importing around 50 dependencies as "resources", building every single one from source or manually checking if it's already on Homebrew, declaring build toolchains for 5 different programming languages as dependencies, waiting over an hour for CI to finish on every update, then an upstream update introduced a "build-time dependency loop" and the project suddenly became unpackable for Homebrew) so I totally get why Mise took the "easy way out" and just relies on language-specific package managers directly.

Only thing from my Brewfile that I couldn't replace was the Docker CLI (needed to interact with Colima). And I still use Homebrew for casks. I encourage others to experiment with their dev setups, there are some amazing new tools out there.

We are not many [1], but Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions.

Note that certain operating systems such as Universal Blue's Bazzite (1.28%), Bluefin (0.49%) and Aurora (0.28%) default to bundling Homebrew [2].

[1] https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os-version/365d/

[2] https://github.com/ublue-os/brew

The only people I want to trust to quickly ship new code to my machine are Apple and my browser (which handles more untrusted input than anything else).

For everything else (vscode and its extensions, npm, homebrew, and all the apps that self-update), I prefer to err on the side of waiting a few days.

Some exceptional 0days might warrant a cooldown bypass, but even in its current form users are vulnerable to 0days until they run brew upgrade.

I donate to a lot of open source projects that I benefit from, but I’ve never really thought about Homebrew. I will get onto it.

- Brew seems to have better support for the packages it has, compared to Nix where it seems a percentage of packages are not as well maintained,

- Better Mac support; some Nix packages have features disabled on macOS, I think just because the maintainers of this packages don’t have a Mac for testing,

- Better UX.

Obviously I miss the reproducibility of Nix environments and the ability to easily create my own flakes with specific packages, but on the balance, Brew has won me back. (I still like Nix, and FWIW we use Nix at work.)

I know supporting Intel is an ordeal and a choice, but I'm firmly on the camp that Homebrew should find a way to maintain Intel support as long as possible.

On another note, to commenters here, I've been using brew bundle with the Brewfile more and more these days as a declarative list of all user packages installed, should I just move to Mise or Nix instead? What are the benefits and drawbacks? Last time I used Nix on my MacBook a few years ago it seemed to brick my whole system so not sure what that was about.

[0] https://github.com/lucasgelfond/zerobrew

Also coming from what I consider traditional package managers such as apt, rpm, emerge, pkg, etc. I am still confused on cans, taps, kegs, formulas, etc. Does anyone have a good and concise guide to what all these features are?

Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages. This makes cleaning up your workstation nearly impossible and a pain in the ass, since you can't tell what should be removed, or more importantly, what can be removed.

Also, most native package managers update much slower than Homebrew, meaning you often only get outdated packages.

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...

Claude found evidence of an exfiltration malware on my laptop and I inmediately wiped the device and started again. Revoked all my keys, rotated all my passwords. And now I pray the damage is contained.

I can’t believe that Google would have let this slip through. I probably wasn't the only one that got caught out.

Forced upgrades are not nice.

I'd consider donating, but I find that behavior to be part of squeezing free computing and participating in and advocating for the corporate erosion of ownership of one's hardware environment.

I install homebrew as a first thing on my corporate amazon linux too as many system packages are lacking, and I couldn't get neovim in a different way.

How many more supply chain attacks will it take for someone to build a really great sandboxing/permissioning system, that's easy enough to use that we actually use it?

Say I install an `ls` alternative (because it's on the HN front page as 'ls but in lang du jour' or whatever) – it should be really simple for me to allow it read-only access to only the passed directory. I don't think firejail or apparmour even supports that, and it'd probably take me half a day to figure it out in bubblewrap.

I just want a mobile-OS style pop-up the first time programs try to do something for me to deny, approve always, approve this time, approve by dir, or custom thing matching on the args.

Speaking of important things.

I noticed that homebrew updated _all_ my casks when running 'brew upgrade' (even those with "auto_updates: true" in their Cask JSON API).

Is this intended, new default behavior? This did not use to happen...

I just ran the upgrade to 6.0.0, and it downloaded so many things concurrently that it killed my wifi (old router). Is there a way to cap bandwidth or maximum concurrent connections? (this is something I have to do in many download heavy apps, e.g., steam)

I'd use it today on Linux, but I'm pretty anal about only using software from the distribution repos (or compiled locally if not available.)

I'd personally love a "Homebrew light", compatible with most of the ecosystem (sans git taps, Ruby formulas and binary packages), written in a language with fast startup times, not keeping unnecessary files on disk, with support for parallel downloads, and terminology that is much easier for the newcomers to remember and keep straight.

It's probably discussed somewhere but didn't find when glancing at the OP.

I discovered Homebrew now sometimes asks whether I actually want to install a formula (e.g. `brew install ffmpeg` asks whether I want to install it because it has dependencies). Is there a way to disable this behavior and revert to the previous one?

That was when I realized Homebrew is much, much harder.

Your server needs to implement the git protocol. You can't just stick it on some server with a CDN in front of it, you need to run and fortify a git server.

Strange choices IMHO.

I am using my own custom "package" manager in ruby, but naturally it is nowhere near as sophisticated as homebrew. I am looking more towards complementing this, but these days I also lack time for more thorough testing, so I try to minimize pain points (and thus also less frequently use software written by others for the most part, unless it is a key project such as libreoffice and what not).

Fantastic work Mike and team, though I’m still a little confused about cask upgrades.

https://brew.sh/2019/02/02/homebrew-2.0.0/

But can you please support old Mac too? As you upgrade brew, many brew break for old Mac since the old library/framework. And in this situation, i had to switch from brew to macports plus brew. It's a pain for old Mac to using brew.

Also, what about installation directories? I always install homebrew to ~/.brew since I know I’ll always have access to my home directory without sudo.

Apple could’ve made something like this, or at least pay you handsomely for making Macs better to use.

Thanks for your job!

Honestly just use mise instead.

hmm... that's too bad.