Tips and Tricks
Install previous versions of formulae
Some formulae inhomebrew/core are made available asversioned formulae using a special naming format, e.g.gcc@9. If the version you’re looking for isn’t available, consider usingbrew extract.
Quickly remove something from Homebrew’s prefix
brewunlink <formula>This can be useful if a package can’t build against the version of something you have linked into Homebrew’s prefix.
And of course, you can simplybrew link <formula> again afterwards!
Pre-download a file for a formula
Sometimes it’s faster to download a file via means other than the strategies that are available as part of Homebrew. For example, Erlang provides a torrent that’ll let you download at 4–5× compared to the normal HTTP method.
Downloads are saved in thedownloads subdirectory of Homebrew’s cache directory (as specified bybrew --cache, e.g.~/Library/Caches/Homebrew) and renamed as<url-hash>--<formula>-<version>. The commandbrew --cache --build-from-source <formula> will print the expected path of the cached download, so after downloading the file, you can runmv the_tarball "$(brew --cache --build-from-source <formula>)" to relocate it to the cache.
You can also pre-cache the download by using the commandbrew fetch <formula> which also displays the SHA-256 hash. This can be useful for updating formulae to new versions.
Install stuff without the Xcode CLT
brew sh# or: eval "$(brew --env)"geminstallronn# or c-programsThis imports thebrew environment into your existing shell;gem will pick up the environment variables and be able to build. As a bonus,brew’s automatically determined optimization flags are set.
Install only a formula’s dependencies (not the formula)
brewinstall--only-dependencies <formula>Use the interactive Homebrew shell
$brew irb==>Interactive Homebrew ShellExample commands available with: `brew irb --examples`irb(main):001:0>Formulary.factory("ace").methods - Object.methods=>[:install, :test, :test_defined?, :sbin, :pkgshare, :elisp,:frameworks, :kext_prefix, :any_version_installed?, :etc, :pkgetc,...:on_macos, :on_linux, :debug?, :quiet?, :verbose?, :with_context]irb(main):002:0>Hide the beer mug emoji when finishing a build
exportHOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI=1This sets theHOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI environment variable, causing Homebrew to hide all emoji.
The beer emoji can also be replaced with other character(s):
exportHOMEBREW_INSTALL_BADGE="☕️ 🐸"Migrate a Homebrew installation to a new location
Runningbrew bundle dump will record an installation to aBrewfile andbrew bundle install will install from aBrewfile. Seebrew bundle --help for more details.
Appoint Homebrew Cask to manage a manually-installed app
Runbrew install --cask with the--adopt switch:
$brewinstall--cask--adopt textmate==>Downloading https://github.com/textmate/textmate/releases/download/v2.0.23/TextMate_2.0.23.tbz...==>Installing Cask textmate==>Adopting existing App at'/Applications/TextMate.app'==>Linking Binary'mate' to'/opt/homebrew/bin/mate'🍺 textmate was successfully installed!Editor plugins
Visual Studio Code
Brewfile adds Ruby syntax highlighting for
brew bundle’sBrewfiles.Brew Services is an extension for starting and stopping Homebrew services.
Sublime Text
- Homebrew-formula-syntax can be installed with Package Control in Sublime Text 2/3, which adds highlighting for inline patches.
Vim
- brew.vim adds highlighting to inline patches in Vim.
Emacs
homebrew-mode provides syntax highlighting for inline patches as well as a number of helper functions for editing formula files.
pcmpl-homebrew provides completion for emacs shell-mode and eshell-mode.
macOS Terminal.app: Enable the “Open man Page” contextual menu item
In the macOS Terminal, you can right-click on a command name (likels ortar) and pop open its manpage in a new window by selecting “Open man Page”.
Terminal needs an extra hint on where to find manpages installed by Homebrew because it doesn’t load normal dotfiles like~/.bash_profile or~/.zshrc.
sudo mkdir-p /usr/local/etc/man.decho"MANPATH /opt/homebrew/share/man" |sudo tee-a /usr/local/etc/man.d/homebrew.man.confIf you’re using Homebrew on macOS Intel, you should also fix permissions afterwards with:
sudo chown-R"${USER}" /usr/local/etcUse a caching proxy or mirror for Homebrew bottles
You can configure Homebrew to retrieve bottles from a caching proxy or mirror.
For example, in JFrog’s Artifactory, accessible athttps://artifacts.example.com,configure a new “remote” repository withhomebrew as the “repository key” andhttps://ghcr.io as the URL.
Then, set these environment variables for Homebrew to retrieve from the caching proxy.
exportHOMEBREW_ARTIFACT_DOMAIN=https://artifacts.example.com/artifactory/homebrew/exportHOMEBREW_ARTIFACT_DOMAIN_NO_FALLBACK=1exportHOMEBREW_DOCKER_REGISTRY_BASIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$(printf'anonymous:' |base64)"Loading Homebrew from the same dotfiles on different operating systems
Some users may want to use the same shell initialization files on macOS and Linux.Use this to detect the likely Homebrew installation directory and load Homebrew when it’s found.You may need to adapt this to your particular shell or other particulars of your environment.
command-v brew||exportPATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:/usr/local/bin"command-v brew&&eval"$(brew shellenv)"