Homebrew – Intro To The Mac OS X Package Installer

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I thought I should mention the very easy Homebrew package installer for Mac OS X. I’ve found it quite simple to use and have not turned back since I blew away my MacPorts.

You can find Homebrew on gitub and you can find the recommended installation instructions there which are as follows.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSLk https://gist.github.com/raw/323731/install_homebrew.rb)"

This will download the install_homebrew.rb ruby script and execute it in one go. If you are unsure or just curious and can read ruby code you can see this script here

In brief, this script changes permissions on various directories, downloads the Homebrew install files and installs them under /usr/local

Before I ran this install, I blew away my MacPorts installation using these instructions, which suggests the following…

sudo port -f uninstall installed

sudo rm -rf \
    /opt/local \
    /Applications/DarwinPorts \
    /Applications/MacPorts \
    /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.* \
    /Library/Receipts/DarwinPorts*.pkg \
    /Library/Receipts/MacPorts*.pkg \
    /Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup \
    /Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 \
    /Library/Tcl/macports1.0 \
    ~/.macports

Since Apple does not touch /usr/local I cleaned that out too, since anything in there on my Mac would have been installed by MacPorts. Homebrew installs under /usr/local and I wanted it to be nice and clean. Doing this will depend on what you’ve been up to with your Mac.

Some key files that will be installed by the installer are

/usr/local/bin/brew

This script does all the magic of installing, uninstalling, listing installed packages, showing package information and other tasks.

/usr/local/Cellar/

This directory is where the files are installed for the packages you install. You can see some of the package directories I have installed on this machine.

$ ls -dF1 /usr/local/Cellar/*
/usr/local/Cellar/bash-completion/
/usr/local/Cellar/geos/
/usr/local/Cellar/git/
/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/
/usr/local/Cellar/ossp-uuid/
/usr/local/Cellar/pidof/
/usr/local/Cellar/postgis/
/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/
/usr/local/Cellar/proj/
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/
/usr/local/Cellar/wget/

Once, you’re installed you should be able to run brew install to install packages.

Packages are first downloaded to /Library/Caches/Homebrew/, so if you do uninstall and re-install, you will not have to re-download them a second time.

Here’s a dump of the files my cache directory.

ls -1 /Library/Caches/Homebrew/*
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/bash-completion-1.2.tar.bz2
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/geos-3.2.2.tar.bz2
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/git-1.7.3.2.tar.bz2
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/git-htmldocs-1.7.3.2.tar.bz2
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/git-manpages-1.7.3.2.tar.bz2
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/mongodb-1.6.3-x86_64.tgz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/mysql-5.1.51.tar.gz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/ossp-uuid-1.6.2.tar.gz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/pidof-0.1.4.tar.gz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/postgis-1.5.2.tar.gz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/postgresql-9.0.1.tar.bz2
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/proj-4.7.0.tar.gz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/proj-datumgrid-1.5.zip
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/readline-6.1.tar.gz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/solr-1.4.1.tgz
/Library/Caches/Homebrew/wget-1.12.tar.bz2

I will demonstrate installing Mongodb, which is a “scalable, high-performance, open source, document-oriented database”. Think “NoSQL”.

brew install mongodb

Here’s the output

==> Downloading http://fastdl.mongodb.org/osx/mongodb-osx-x86_64-1.6.3.tgz
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Caveats
If this is your first install, automatically load on login with:
    cp /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/1.6.3-x86_64/org.mongodb.mongod.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
    launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist

If this is an upgrade and you already have the org.mongodb.mongod.plist loaded:
    launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist
    cp /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/1.6.3-x86_64/org.mongodb.mongod.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
    launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist

Or start it manually:
    mongod run --config /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/1.6.3-x86_64/mongod.conf
==> Summary
/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/1.6.3-x86_64: 16 files, 83M, built in 2 seconds

A command I really like is the info command.

brew info mongodb

It will give you all the information you need for a particular package for starting, stopping, restarting or other actions pertinent the service you installed. If will be similar to the information output when you first install a package. It’s good to know about this command so that you can always find the maintenance commands.

Here is an example of the info command for the postgresql package.

brew info postgresql

postgresql 9.0.1

http://www.postgresql.org/

Depends on: readline, ossp-uuid
/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.0.1 (1229 files, 25M)

If builds of Postgresl 9 are failing and you have version 8.x installed,
you may need to remove the previous version first. See:

http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/issue/2510

To build plpython against a specific Python, set PYTHON prior to brewing:
  PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python  brew install postgresql
See:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/install-procedure.html

If this is your first install, create a database with:
    initdb /usr/local/var/postgres

If this is your first install, automatically load on login with:
    cp /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.0.1/org.postgresql.postgres.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
    launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.postgresql.postgres.plist

If this is an upgrade and you already have the org.postgresql.postgres.plist loaded:
    launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.postgresql.postgres.plist
    cp /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.0.1/org.postgresql.postgres.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
    launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.postgresql.postgres.plist

Or start manually with:
    pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start

And stop with:
    pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres stop -s -m fast

If you want to install the postgres gem, including ARCHFLAGS is recommended:
    env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install pg

To install gems without sudo, see the Homebrew wiki.

http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/postgresql.rb

brew list will tell you which packages are installed.

brew help will give you the following

Usage: brew [-v|--version] [--prefix [formula]] [--cache [formula]]
            [--cellar [formula]] [--config] [--env] [--repository]
            [-h|--help] COMMAND [formula] ...

Principle Commands:
  install formula ... [--ignore-dependencies] [--HEAD]
  list [--unbrewed|--versions] [formula] ...
  search [/regex/] [substring]
  uninstall formula ...
  update

Other Commands:
  info formula [--github]
  options formula
  deps formula
  uses formula [--installed]
  home formula ...
  cleanup [formula]
  link formula ...
  unlink formula ...
  outdated
  missing
  prune
  doctor

Informational:
  --version
  --config
  --prefix [formula]
  --cache [formula]

Commands useful when contributing:
  create URL
  edit [formula]
  audit [formula]
  log formula
  install formula [-vd|-i]

For more information:
  man brew

To visit the Homebrew homepage type:
  brew home

I hope you find this quick intro to Homebrew helpful. Please leave a comment to question.