[lamontcg]

> Why does a package manager need to track their users at all?

Do any of you actually work in this industry shipping software products to end users? Without telemetry the problem there is literally one of trying to read the mind of your end users to figure out what they're doing, hoping that your internal CI manages to reflect the configuration in their environment.

[Shish2k]

I think HN has a very varied audience - some work in the industry, others want A/B testing to be made illegal on the grounds that it is non-consensual mind-control experimentation :P

[bathtub365]

The groups of people who work in the industry and those who believe A/B testing is psychological experimentation aren’t disjoint.

[jeltz]

I am in both groups. I work in the industry and I am so tired of colleagues wanting to grab or data they can get their grubby hands on and then barely use it at all for anything useful. So many companies collect data just in case.

[hungryforcodes]

Users report issues to GitHub? It's not like Brew users aren't sophisticated in that sense.

In addition to being INCREDIABLY slow, now I have to worry about what it might spy on. If I have a problem I'm more than happy to go to GitHub (or which ever site it's hosted on), and report it.

[closewith]

I imagine many of us work shipping software to end users and also respect their right to privacy, and only track their actions with informed consent.

[account42]

This industry has managed to ship software products without telemetry just fine - mass-collecting usage data from end users is only a relatively recent trend.

[pdimitar]

Any actual arguments?

I don't see why something that's little more than a file server needs telemetry.

[woodruffw]

Homebrew is a package manager with thousands of packages, not a file server. We maintain those packages, and knowing when they break (or can be deprecated due to lack of use) is critical to the project's sustenance.

[pdimitar]

Okay, fair enough. But the breakage can't be detected without telemetry then, I take it?

If so, that's... not ideal for sure.

[woodruffw]

Homebrew can detect a lot of things during normal maintenance work: there are extensive tests and checks during compilation and bottle building, for example.

However, we can't catch everything: Homebrew has millions of users, and those users have all kinds of different setups. We can't predict every possible host and software interaction; basic failure analytics help bridge the gap there.

[pdimitar]

Okay, I'm sold, and I'm sorry for being blunt.

Where can I learn more? Can you point me at the right place in the source?

I'll not be banning Homebrew telemetry.

[woodruffw]

I understand the desire for privacy, and the seriousness that comes with it!

I've linked Homebrew's analytics data and the source code that collects it elsewhere in this thread.

And, to be absolutely clear: it is perfectly fine for you to disable Homebrew's analytics. There are an infinite number of legitimate reasons for doing so, including the most basic one of "I just don't want to." My sole goal is to dispel the small number of inaccurate beliefs about what Homebrew collects, why we collect it, etc.

[lamontcg]

And with packages that compile.

Which the software that I used to be employed maintaining has actually broken homebrew compiles when they've been installed at the same time (which I think I made better but I never got the PM who actually owned the product to spend the resources to properly fix).

A good example of how the configuration in the end user environment can affect package installation.

[therealdrag0]

Have you looked at the analytics yet? Or are you only speaking from ideological priors?

The most valuable one I’d guess is package install error rates. Seems pretty useful to me.

[shepherdjerred]

> something that's little more than a file server

You're doing an awful disservice to Homebrew.

[pdimitar]

I am, yes, and sorry about it.

I don't like telemetry at all and I believe we have to find other ways to do QA. Hence my strong reaction.