Hacker News Reader

Comment by BoorishBears | Hacker News Reader

I've never had issues with Homebrew, and no one I know has either.

I have had apt refuse to install npm because of a full /boot partition (Imagine if Homebrew refused to run because I couldn't update OS X)

I think it's ironic you say homebrew is the one trying to do too much...

View on HN

What. I've seen issues with Homebrew at every company/team I've worked with since it came out. The solution is always the same: Use vagrant and chef/puppet for your development environment.

Meanwhile, apt packages are incredibly stable, install the same way every time, and are exactly what you'd run on the server anyway. You can use PPAs if you need bleeding edge versions.

I really don't know what to tell you then, because I've yet to see a Homebrew installation that couldn't install packages, but many times I've had apt break and require either fixing something unrelated to installing my packages (like failed upgrades) or copying and pasting some dpkg invocations until things weren't broken anymore. And when I mention the latter most Linux users I've spoken to say PPAs are a great way to end up doing that (I don't want to start vetting PPAs when I need software, I've never had an issue with a Homebrew installation, be it bleeding edge or old as dirt and requiring finding an old version).

I have no idea how you'd compare Vagrant to... homebrew. Sometimes it's convenient to have software on my actual machine, not a VM...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com