Talk:Homebrew (package manager)

Computer security?

The default install of Homebrew (when I looked at it a year ago) starts by changening the owner of everything in /usr/local to the user installing homebrew.

This is a *serious* security breach of the computer.

How do we get this information into the page in a good way ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.174.186.44 (talk) 10:45, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

The Homebrew project lead explains why this is not a security breach here: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/5172

"Homebrew ensures that it sanitises the PATH so that it will never use an incorrect sudo" Andrew Arderne (talk) 15:30, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Package Manager

I don't really consider Homebrew a package manager, in the same way that RPM, DEB (like Fink), etc are. If it were, it could install versions other than the most recent version. It's more of a "download, compile, and install the latest version of foo" tool, if there's a name for that. Benjaminoakes (talk) 20:26, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

It does do some dependency resolution. For example, when you install memcache, (brew install memcached), it will install libevent if your system doesn't already have it. Maybe it is not as full-fledged as apt-get or others, but I would still consider it a package manager. --///daniel ^talk 03:31, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

You can't have multiple versions active in parallel, but you can brew versions memcached to get older versions if you really need to. -- @samueljohn_de 129.70.135.94 (talk) 10:58, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I am missing your point, but you CAN install older versions of software by checking out an older recipe, building, and linking, all managed by homebrew. Homebrew is built around git, so the entire history of available software is there. Occasionally, you may have to edit the recipie to update the mirror, but this usually works and is the indended way you are supposed to get at older versions. If you happen to have upgraded from an older version of a program, homebrew keeps it around, and you can re-link any version you had previously installed. I think it would be a mistake to not categorize this as a package manager, even if it does things differently than historical package managers. Bcomnes (talk) 23:33, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Given the discussion here, I don't see the need to maintain the disputed tag - it is indisputable that Homebrew allows installing other versions, furthermore I do not feel that is really a requirement to be a package management system, but rather a common (albeit expected) feature. Are we next going to say slackpkg isn't a package manager? Tohuw (talk) 16:18, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Github Information

> In 2010, Homebrew was the third-most-forked repository on GitHub.[4] In 2012, Homebrew had the largest number of new contributors on GitHub.[5] In 2013, Homebrew had both the largest number of contributors and issues closed of any project on GitHub.[6]

Like really, who cares? Is that relevant in any way for this article? 213.95.169.180 (talk) 12:40, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

It demonstrates that the project is notable. It's also relevant because Homebrew relies pretty heavily on the GitHub platform. Opencooper (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Implementation

>The article says "Homebrew does not honor the default privileges of /usr/local; directory ownership is changed from root with group permissions for the wheel group to the installing user and the "admin" group." Is that linux-specific? I don't have a linux box handy to test it, but I can see on my Mac that's not the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whorvath (talk • contribs) 13:56, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

According to https://docs.brew.sh/FAQ#why-should-i-install-homebrew-in-the-default-location it's /usr/local/bin and it's on Intel Macs only, linux and m1 macs user different directories. Akeosnhaoe (talk) 03:52, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

>It is by default installed into /usr/local

On M1 computers it is installed into/opt/homebrew. Should we include that? Unbeatable101 (talk) 18:46, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Definitely. Akeosnhaoe (talk) 02:03, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Unbeatable101 for pointing this out (and @Akeosnhaoe for your confirmation). Although it's a bit late, I just added it now with references.

PonyDuck21 (talk) 13:31, 11 August 2021 (UTC)