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by woodruffw 685 days ago
I don't think this is a fair characterization: on Intel, Homebrew uses `/usr/local`, which Apple has (historically) left empty as a location for non-OS managed software to be placed. To my understanding, this is an artifact of macOS's partial BSD ancestry. On ARM-based Macs, Homebrew uses `/opt` to avoid even this confusion (a trait it shares with other non-OS software but administrative-type software).

On the other hand, if Homebrew used `/usr` by default, this would be a fair characterization. But it doesn't.
1 comments
KolenCh 685 days ago
But the problem is that /usr/local/bin is in the default PATH. They defended this discussion to take over until Apple silicon came and they “silently” fixed it avoiding admitting anything wrong in the beginning
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woodruffw 685 days ago
I don’t really understand what the problem you’re referring to is: /usr/local is explicitly the non-OS software hierarchy, which is why Homebrew used it. When Apple Silicon came out, the prefix was changed as part of allowing native and Rosetta-driven Homebrew installations to co-exist. There’s no nefarious reasoning behind it.

Edit: a thread with a bit of the history can be found here[1].

[1]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/9177

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