Homebrew

The missing package manager for OS X

• Install Homebrew

  
  

  ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

  Paste that at a Terminal prompt.

  The script explains what it will do and then pauses before it does it. There are more installation options here (needed on 10.5).

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• What Does Homebrew Do?

  
  

  Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t.

  $ brew install wget

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• Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local.

  $ cd /usr/local
  $ find Cellar
  Cellar/wget/1.16.1
  Cellar/wget/1.16.1/bin/wget
  Cellar/wget/1.16.1/share/man/man1/wget.1
  
  $ ls -l bin
  bin/wget -> ../Cellar/wget/1.16.1/bin/wget

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• Homebrew won’t install files outside its prefix, and you can place a Homebrew installation wherever you like.

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• Trivially create your own Homebrew packages.

  $ brew create https://foo.com/bar-1.0.tgz
  Created /usr/local/Library/Formula/bar.rb

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• It's all git and ruby underneath, so hack away with the knowledge that you can easily revert your modifications and merge upstream updates.

  $ brew edit wget # opens in $EDITOR!

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• Homebrew formulae are simple Ruby scripts:

  class Wget < Formula
    homepage "https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/"
    url "https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.15.tar.gz"
    sha1 "f3c925f19dfe5ed386daae4f339175c108c50574"
  
    def install
      system "./configure", "--prefix=#{prefix}"
      system "make", "install"
    end
  end

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• Homebrew complements OS X. Install your gems with gem, and their dependencies with brew.

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• Further Documentation

  https://git.io/brew-docs

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• Original code by Max Howell. Website by Rémi Prévost.

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