Homebrew - Package Manager for OS X

Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t. It’s a package manager for mac os just like apt-get or yum package managers for RedHat and Debian linux systems. It makes your life easier to install lots of packages in a single command just like linux. I love Homebrew package manager and i use it on my MacBook Pro.

$ brew install wget

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

$ cd /usr/local
$ find Cellar
Cellar/wget/1.12
Cellar/wget/1.12/bin/wget
Cellar/wget/1.12/share/man/man1/wget.1

$ ls -l bin
bin/wget > ../Cellar/wget/1.12/bin/wget

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

Trivially create your own Homebrew packages.

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

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!

Homebrew formulae are simple Ruby scripts:

require 'formula'

class Wget > Formula
homepage 'http://www.gnu.org/wget/'
url 'http://ftp.gnu.org/wget-1.12.tar.gz'
md5 '308a5476fc096a8a525d07279a6f6aa3'

def install
system "./configure --prefix=#{prefix}"
system 'make install'
end
end

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

Install Homebrew

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

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

Troubleshooting

- First, please run brew update and brew doctor.

$ brew update
$ brew doctor

RESULT:

$ brew update
Updated Homebrew from ad741405 to 728206df.
==> Updated Formulae
daemon        homebank
hicolor-icon-theme    scons$ brew doctor
Your system is ready to brew.