Ask HN: What is bad about Homebrew?

7 points | by croemer a day ago ago

4 comments

  • runjake 13 hours ago

    It's not perfect, but I like it fine. I definitely like it better than Fink and DarwinPorts, though those may be technically superior.

    It's not super simple, but for your htop example, you could probably do something like the following:

      # Create a new tap
      brew tap-new $USER/local-tap
    
      # Extract the specific version you want
      brew extract --version=X.Y.Z htop $USER/local-tap
    
      # Install the extracted version
      brew install htop@X.Y.Z
    
    I'm keeping an eye on the unofficial successor by the original author of Homebrew: https://pkgx.dev/
  • worldsavior 17 hours ago

    Annoying CLI; the things called "casks"; the annoying behavior of updating ALL the packages on your system when installing only one program; and bad handling of broken packages.

  • f30e3dfed1c9 16 hours ago

    I found all the beer-related terminology -- cask, keg, rack, Cellar, Caskroom, tap, bottle -- annoying and unhelpful and immediately disliked it back when it was new. I did use it a little for a while but not in a long time.

    These days I use pkgin, which I like fine. Can't think offhand of when something I wanted wasn't available there. My impression is that homebrew has many more packages available, but apparently not any that I want.

  • apineda 15 hours ago

    I've been a light user for ~5 years maybe? Never really had issues, it's convenient, if a little obtuse relative to say npm install -g.