| It's not really how apt works but rather how Debian works: you use apt with a specific release repository of Debian (stretch, buster or whatever ISO you installed). Debian is really strict about its releases and won't push a breaking change in a specific version of the OS. For instance, `apt install htop` will only ever install the 2.X version of htop in Buster. Including security patches and all, but you won't get a 3.0.0 version without going sideways and add a specific repository for that. Debian will ship with htop version 3 in the next release, but you'll have to upgrade the entire distro for that. Brew is different in that it allows anybody to merge a new breaking version of the software you use, so `brew install htop` on Monday could give you the 2.x version, and on Tuesday will install the 3.0.0 version. You could maybe compare it to the rolling releases of Arch. But Arch has a better way of handling it than Brew: they test, they prepare, they communicate for bug changes.. Brew would benefit from segmenting their offering, but you'd lose the bleeding-edginess of it. Really, if you want reproducible packaging on Mac, I'd use nix or docker. If you want convenience and edge, use brew and deal with it. |
Debian has an official backports repository if you want that behavior. It just gives you the freedom to choose.