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by cupantae 3556 days ago
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."
2 comments
amorphid 3556 days ago
My issue with those APT on Debian is that I almost always have to add another PPA to download a version of something that I actually want to use. That reduces the utility of APT in my view. Having a crowdsourced list of Homebrew packages to install would be fabulous.
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tracker1 3556 days ago
Not only that, but a lot of those PPAs become stale, or get replaced by others, and it's only when you upgrade the dist, that you get failures and discover this... It's pretty annoying. It would be nice to have a meta package manager for "current" PPAs for given projects that wraps apt with brew-like ability.
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DeadBabyOrgasm 3555 days ago
Additionally, creating and maintaining a PPA involves one of the following:

(a) Use the upload form for Launchpad.net [0]

(b) Host your own deb server [1]

Unless you use Bazaar for a VCS, the only time you login to Launchpad is to upload a new release. With Homebrew it's built into git with adding a new tag. A _LOT_ lower barrier to entry here.

[0]: https://help.launchpad.net/Projects/FileDownloads#Publishing...

[1]: https://www.unixmen.com/setup-local-apt-repository-using-ins...

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paublyrne 3556 days ago
Ha, thanks that's a comprehensive answer. Maybe have been a bit of both, looks like the downvotes have been countered now anyway.
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