> "homebrew for linux" type package manager that could safely manage software without conflicting with OS packages.
As someone who uses Homebrew for Linux, I can say that "without conflicting with OS packages" cuts both ways: fine, I get more modern stuff than apt could imagine, but having to monkey with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH or -Wl,-rpath over and over gets old real fast. I have no idea why they tried to be so cute putting things in a stupid directory (/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew) instead of /usr/local like they did with Homebrew for Mac (err, not the arm64 version, where they went back to /opt/homebrew for whoknowswhy)
> A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.)
On what planet is is homebrew better than Linux package managers? I agree with many of the other items in these lists, but this makes literally no sense to me. Homebrew is probably one of the worst things about doing dev on a mac.
> - Homebrew is a shim to get Linux-like packages to work in the limited terminal/shell environment of OSX (at least IMO). I would take `apt-get` over `homebrew` in a heartbeat.
Having a package manager that mostly keeps its hands off my core system is something I didn't realize I wanted until I tried Mac package managers (now using Homebrew). Keeping "update all the junk I've installed" and "update the system itself" separate is pretty nice, though it'd be trickier in Linux since the two concepts aren't as distinct, especially in GUI-space.
I've stayed away from Homebrew because of its insistence on taking over /usr/local. I understand the reasoning, but I use /usr/local for my own installs and Homebrew doesn't play nicely in that kind of mixed environment. I would use it if it defaulted to /opt/homebrew or something similar.
I'm looking forward to this new package manager alternative.
Homebrew is my preferred package manager on Linux. It just seems to work more simply than apt or Flatpak for me, and it’s less context switching when I need to use macOS.
This was one of the pain points that made me move back to Linux on my devices, and I'm glad I did it. Homebrew is infuriating when you're used to real package managers.
Conflicting with the system's package manager is obviously the most problematic issue with porting homebrew to linux, and I can imagine there's many more caveats that would render such a thing pretty useless.
I personally don't use Mac OS(X), but what I understand is that Homebrew is a project designed to give the functionality of a Linux command-line package manager to OSX.
For most (all? Slackware...) Linux distributions, there is ONE package manager: for Debian/Ubuntu it's APT, for Arch it's Pacman, for RedHat & friends it's RPM, etc. There is exactly one, because all the files which aren't user data or configuration are owned by some package or other. It's all well and good when there's a clear need for this on OSX, and so Homebrew must keep up to date with the official software management and keep itself contained, not breaking anything. Having a second package manager on Linux, which doesn't treat Linux as the main target platform, seems both pointless and asking for trouble.
Alternatively, you could be harsh and figure that the downvoters were saying, "No, you don't prefer Homebrew. You prefer your distribution's package manager, and thou shalt use it correctly."
I don't know why anyone would want Homebrew on Linux anyway. The whole point of it is that OS X is a mostly-serviceable UNIX without a decent package manager. So if you have a handful of UNIX packages you just want a lightweight way to install them using the system headers where applicable.
But if you need to install tons of stuff the cracks start to show, because you have no conflict resolution or sophisticated versioning. Linux leans heavily on its package managers, so I just don't see what Homebrew has to offer.
I haven't read the page, but I would guess they're trying to highlight how a real package manager works, compared to the cool-kids toy tool Homebrew.
Given that there are Mac using developers, who somehow think Homebrew is a good tool, and then want Homebrew for Linux so they can use it there, because they have no fucking idea what a real package manager is like, I don't blame them for wanting to highlight how powerful Apt is.
And homebrew isn't the only package manager on OSX.
I actually see this as an argument in favour of OSX, as it is much more straightforward to change package manager than on Linux, where the sane way to change package manager is to change your distribution.
Ah, I was expecting you to say something lower level than that. Homebrew is however quite unlike package managers I've used on Linux, and even MacPorts is a little different…I've heard that WSL is pretty decent and presumably APT works on it, though I haven't touched it since it first came out and it was broken in some way that I cared about.
Homebrew was created to add the package manager experience of Linux to Mac OS X, so what gap does this fill?
Mac users already experience issues relating to having multiple non-default package managers (i.e. Homebrew and MacPorts) - what conflicts will having a default and non-default package manager arise?
The problem it is trying to solve would be better approached hosting Debian, RHEL etc repositories which mirror each other in their structure.
It might not be the official package manager, but what was claimed is that it is the primary package manager. I’d wager that Homebrew is more used than... I don’t even remember what you mentioned as the other one as I’ve never heard of it before and have never used it.
As someone who uses Homebrew for Linux, I can say that "without conflicting with OS packages" cuts both ways: fine, I get more modern stuff than apt could imagine, but having to monkey with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH or -Wl,-rpath over and over gets old real fast. I have no idea why they tried to be so cute putting things in a stupid directory (/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew) instead of /usr/local like they did with Homebrew for Mac (err, not the arm64 version, where they went back to /opt/homebrew for whoknowswhy)
reply