brew/README

Homebrew
========
A simple package management system for OS X Leopard. Packages are brewed in
individual, versioned kegs. For example:

/Brewery/Cellar/wget/1.14/bin/wget

Then symlinks are created to create a normal POSIX tree:

/Brewery/bin/wget -> /Brewery/Cellar/wget/1.14/bin/wget

This way the filesystem is the package database. Everything else is now easy.
We are made of win.

Max Howell -- http://twitter.com/mxcl


Installation
============
Homebrew uses Ruby and some other stuff that is already installed on Leopard.
Just copy this directory somewhere. I suggest /Brewery but leave the directory
user writable (for now). I wouldn't worry about it not being chroot. We don't
install anything base enough for it to be a concern (unlike MacPorts or Fink).

You can stick this directory in your home directory if you like. In that case
a typical (POSIX) choice would be: /User/mxcl/local

It's actually pretty useful if you are a developer to put the tree at
/usr/local because almost all build scripts look there as part of their
configure step, so your work (outside of Homebrew) will be somewhat easier.

You then need to stick /Brewery/bin or ~/local/bin in your path.

To 'install' the brew tool to Homebrew's bin dir, do:

    $ ruby /Brewery/Cellar/homebrew/brewkit.rb


Usage
=====
Install wget:
    ruby /Brewery/Formula/wget.rb

Update recipes list:
    cd /Brewery && git pull origin master

Delete a package:
    rm -rf /Brewery/Cellar/wget && brew prune

List all files in a package:
    find /Brewery/Cellar/wget

Search for a package to install:
    ls /Brewery/Formula/*wget*

Search for a package already installed:
    ls /Brewery/Cellar/*wget*

List all packages available to install:
    ls /Brewery/Formula

Compute installed size of package:
    du -h /Brewery/Cellar/wget

You get the idea.

Maybe we should overload this stuff with the brew command, but frankly I feel
that this way *you* will understand the capabilities of the system better. And
you basically know everything that is going on.

With apt, you type apt-get install wget. Now what is happening? With Homebrew
you are running a ruby script. You know what is happening. You can easily and
quickly read the source and modify it and then push the patch to github if
anything you need is missing or something is not working. This is real open
source.

NOTE you have to install git before you can update the package list. *shrug*


Why Not MacPorts?
=================
1. MacPorts installs its own libz, its own openssl, etc. It's an autarky.
   This makes no sense to me. OS X comes with all that shit.
2. MacPorts support Tiger, and PPC. We don't, so things are better optimised.


Homebrew Will Never Build:
==========================
1. KDE, or GNOME, or anything that vast
2. Anything that should be distributed in a .app bundle
3. Anything that needs to install outside of the Homebrew tree
4. Stuff OS X already does, eg. rubygems (duplication sucks)


Why Compile From Source?
========================
Since we only target Intel Leopard boxes, why not just distribute binaries?
Well, I can't afford to :P And compiling from source gives more flexibility.
If you want to adapt the system and make it work with binaries; fork away. 
The bandwidth is on you though :P


How do I Notify Someone that a Package is out of Date?
======================================================
Chances are that if the package hasn't been updated for a few days, then the
previous maintainer has vanished. You have to do it. Don't worry, unlike every
other packaging system ever, it's easy with Homebrew:

1. Edit the relevant ruby file in /Brewery/Formula
2. Fork Homebrew on github (or generate a patch)
3. Send mxcl a pull request

Congratulations, you have contributed to an open source project!


Contributing
============
New Formulas
------------
Relative to every other stupid packaging system ever, this is trivial. Just
fork it at: http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew and create a new recipe. Then ask
me to pull. Using git made all this so much easier.

Code
----
Yes please! Fork and improve :)


FAQ
===
Are you excessively interested in beer?
---------------------------------------
Yes.

Was Homebrew devised under the influence of alchohol?
-----------------------------------------------------
Yes.