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Wow, Linux support. I guess that's useful for those times when the OS package manager is out of date? Or is it in order to not run as root?

misnome 8y ago
It’s very useful when on a remote login where you don’t have root but want more modern software e.g. academic HPC clusters with shared filesystems, which tend to have extremely “conservative” OS versions (we are stuck on RHEL6 for the forseeable future). I’m not aware of much else that fulfills this niche well - conda seems very very tied to precisely tested version combinations, and (from what I remember - tried and had problems) nix seems to want root/system level daemons.
- messe 8y ago
  pkgsrc[1] is portable to most Unix(-like) systems, and can run as a non-privileged user, so that would likely work as well. I'd trust it more than homebrew anyway. [1]: http://pkgsrc.org/ http://pkgsrc.org/
  - devzer0 8y ago
    > I'd trust it more than homebrew anyway. I'm curious why you feel this way.
- kalefranz 8y ago
  > conda seems very very tied to precisely tested version combinations, and (from what I remember - tried and had problems) Hello. Conda core contributor here. Do you have any more details? Would love to help. We try to keep version constraints among dependencies as loose as possible. We do actively patch dependency metadata over time, putting upper version bounds on dependencies when incompatibilities eventually arise.
jadbox 8y ago
I wouldn't recommend it for Fedora since dnf repos are as updated as brew (if not faster) and dep version conflicts are handled better than almost any package manager out there imho.
deleted 8y ago
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jsight 8y ago
I believe that brew makes it much easier to support multiple versions of the same package installed simultaneously.
- devzer0 8y ago
  Yes, I like Homebrew's GNU stow - like capabilities of linking stuff in and out of your environment. A word of warning, however: Homebrew 2.0 removes your old formula from the Cellar when upgrading. If you want to disable this you must set HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP in your environment if you want to hold on to those older versions.
pmarreck 8y ago
I wonder if it builds on Amazon's weird version of Linux they use on EC2 machines by default
h1d 8y ago
Why they put stuff under /home/linuxbrew, I don't know. That practice is so unordinary, I refuse to use it.
- devzer0 8y ago
  You can put it under your home folder too. That's the primary use case, I believe: cases where the system is old & crufty and you don't have root.
devzer0 8y ago
Yes, many maintainers/linuxbrew folk are/were in science/academia. They were tired of logging into HPC system X and needing a certain piece of software. With linuxbrew/homebrew on linux you can just install/build the entire toolchain in user land and get software in your home directory when you don't have root.

misnome 8y ago

It’s very useful when on a remote login where you don’t have root but want more modern software e.g. academic HPC clusters with shared filesystems, which tend to have extremely “conservative” OS versions (we are stuck on RHEL6 for the forseeable future). I’m not aware of much else that fulfills this niche well - conda seems very very tied to precisely tested version combinations, and (from what I remember - tried and had problems) nix seems to want root/system level daemons.

messe 8y ago
pkgsrc[1] is portable to most Unix(-like) systems, and can run as a non-privileged user, so that would likely work as well. I'd trust it more than homebrew anyway. [1]: http://pkgsrc.org/ http://pkgsrc.org/
- devzer0 8y ago
  > I'd trust it more than homebrew anyway. I'm curious why you feel this way.
kalefranz 8y ago
> conda seems very very tied to precisely tested version combinations, and (from what I remember - tried and had problems) Hello. Conda core contributor here. Do you have any more details? Would love to help. We try to keep version constraints among dependencies as loose as possible. We do actively patch dependency metadata over time, putting upper version bounds on dependencies when incompatibilities eventually arise.

jadbox 8y ago

I wouldn't recommend it for Fedora since dnf repos are as updated as brew (if not faster) and dep version conflicts are handled better than almost any package manager out there imho.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jsight 8y ago

I believe that brew makes it much easier to support multiple versions of the same package installed simultaneously.

devzer0 8y ago
Yes, I like Homebrew's GNU stow - like capabilities of linking stuff in and out of your environment. A word of warning, however: Homebrew 2.0 removes your old formula from the Cellar when upgrading. If you want to disable this you must set HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP in your environment if you want to hold on to those older versions.

pmarreck 8y ago

I wonder if it builds on Amazon's weird version of Linux they use on EC2 machines by default

h1d 8y ago

Why they put stuff under /home/linuxbrew, I don't know. That practice is so unordinary, I refuse to use it.

devzer0 8y ago
You can put it under your home folder too. That's the primary use case, I believe: cases where the system is old & crufty and you don't have root.

devzer0 8y ago

Yes, many maintainers/linuxbrew folk are/were in science/academia. They were tired of logging into HPC system X and needing a certain piece of software. With linuxbrew/homebrew on linux you can just install/build the entire toolchain in user land and get software in your home directory when you don't have root.