[Terretta]

> for example "brew install" writes files into /usr/local/

I think it's /opt/homebrew on M1.

https://docs.brew.sh/FAQ#why-should-i-install-homebrew-in-th...

> permissions model means that Homebrew-managed parts of the system become a single user system, as far as I know. Multiple user accounts on the same Mac can't easily use Homebrew

The single user thing is problematic in a corp env where you may have a mgmt admin user and a non-admin dev user.

Long story short, temporarily have the dev user be an admin, install brew, drop the admin priv. That works for cli tools (which is actually great), but may not work for /Applications unless you change its ownership. Used to be OSX effectively (not literally) merged ~/Applications and /Applications, but now in MacOS the security sandboxing and entitlements don't like that.