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by Steuard 3918 days ago
It's been a while since I looked into it, but I opted to stick with MacPorts rather than Homebrew in large part because I got the impression that Homebrew wanted to own /usr/local rather than sharing it with other software. (Maybe that's inaccurate?) I still occasionally compile software by hand rather than through a package manager, and /usr/local has been the default target for a system-wide install on every Unix-style system that I've used in the past 20-ish years.

(Also, my wife and I both have active accounts on my machine, which makes me uneasy having files in a systemwide directory like /usr/local owned by one specific user. That also feels distinctly non-standard to me.)
2 comments
mjs 3918 days ago
> I got the impression that Homebrew wanted to own /usr/local rather than sharing it with other software

This is still accurate. Homebrew creates/manages /usr/local/.git. /usr/local/.gitignore starts with /* which is … not conventional.

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omribahumi 3918 days ago
It is possible to switch /usr/local according to [1], they state it's not recommended though.

[1] https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/h...

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halostatue 3918 days ago
I have used ~/.brew for years—it means that I have to do a slightly custom install every time I move to a new machine—but have never had a problem with it.
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