Homebrew - Things We Do Differently

Homebrew is a popular package manager for OS X. Compared to most Linux package managers we have some pretty major differences from how we run the project (pull-requests on GitHub) to how we interact with the system (try to use system-provided libraries when possible) and use of root (we actively refuse to use it). Come and hear about how we'd do Homebrew differently if we were starting it from scratch today and what other package managers can learn from our failures and successes.

Presented at FOSDEM in 2016.

Transcript

1. Things We Do Differently Mike McQuaid Homebrew
2. Mike McQuaid
   https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid A
3. GitHub fork-based contribution
4. 5,472 contributors to Homebrew/homebrew
5. 48,548 PRs/issues on Homebrew/homebrew
6. apjanke mikemcquaid asparagui tdsmith bfontaine UniqMartin xu-cheng mistydemeo DomT4 dunn
7. Written in Ruby
9. Doesn’t use the root user
10. Uses system libraries
11. depends_run port:rsync \ port:p5.12-error depends_lib port:p5.12 \ port:curl \ port:zlib \ port:openssl \ port:expat \ port:libiconv
13. Updates using Git
14. Install prefixes use package/version
15. $ cd /usr/local/Cellar
 $ find wget
 
 wget/1.13.4/AUTHORS
 wget/1.13.4/bin/wget
 wget/1.13.4/ChangeLog
 wget/1.13.4/COPYING
 wget/1.13.4/INSTALL_RECEIPT.json
 wget/1.13.4/README
 wget/1.13.4/share/man/man1/wget.1
16. Avoids patching
18. Enforces Code of Conduct
19. Accepts niche/new projects
20. Questions?