Why Package Managers are Great - With a Focus on Homebrew

Written by Eric Miller
Published on Apr 21, 2017
Topic: Technology
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I really like package managers. Often, I’ll even get a bit preachy about them. So guess what I’m going to do!

Package managers are a lovely piece of technology. Linux users will be very familiar with the terminology, but the fact is most of us interact with them regularly without even realizing it.

From Wikipedia: A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer’s operating system in a consistent manner.

Sound familiar? That’s what the iOS and Android app stores do. That’s even what the Windows and Mac app stores do. And that’s really all this is: instead of downloading an app off the internet, running it, and then having to dig around for an uninstaller to remove it. Package managers take care of this for you. Of course, a package manager also has even more upsides:

  • If the software has any dependencies, the package manager will install those automatically.
  • You can easily update all of your software at once, or even automate it to happen regularly.
  • Most package managers are curated, so when you install something, you can be confident that it came from a legitimate source.
  • There is a unified interface for everything - there are no special steps to install or remove software.
  • Things install consistently - you don’t need to choose an install directory, or show the installer where the dependencies are - it takes care of everything.
  • It uses sane installation options. You know how sometimes you’ll open an installer and it’ll “generously” offer to change your search engine to Yahoo, install 14 toolbars, and other goofy things? Package managers will disable those by default (typically).
  • It adds command line tools to your PATH automatically, so you don’t have to think.
  • It verifies that your download hasn’t been corrupted.
  • It makes migrating to a new computer a breeze.

Traditional package managers operate using the command line. If you’re not computer savvy, this is probably intimidating. But I’ll provide some options regardless. For Windows users, Chocolatey exists. In my opinion, it’s a bit incomplete, and somewhat poorly maintained, but to me a mediocre package manager is better than none. For Mac, there are two good options, Homebrew and MacPorts. I recommend Homebrew, as it’s simpler in my opinion, but MacPorts has its own advantages. I won’t wax philosophical about it here.

Package managers are particularly useful to people in software development or IT, as they handle many of the intricacies that are easy to mess up. If you’re in those fields, and are not familiar with package managers, I highly recommend taking the time to learn your way around them.

So How do You Use One?

In this example, I’m using Homebrew, because it’s native to my OS and I’m most familiar with it. To install software, for example ruby, simply type brew install ruby. To remove it, brew remove ruby. Easy. But what about installing something bigger, like Java? Homebrew has a built-in extension for some packages that were outside the philosophical scope of the original homebrew, called Homebrew-Cask. To install Java, just run brew cask install java, and to remove just brew cask remove Java. Again, easy.

Now you want to update your apps. For homebrew, just run brew update && brew upgrade -y. The -y lets it know that you’re sure you want to upgrade them, so it doesn’t ask you if you’re sure. But wait! You don’t want to upgrade something because you need a specific version! brew has you covered. Just run brew pin something and it’ll stay at the version it’s at.

Unfortunately, Homebrew (and Cask) is an incomplete package manager at this point in time. This is one of the reasons MacPorts can be better. Homebrew-Cask doesn’t actually have an updater built-in, but you can install one with this. TL;DR: Run this: brew tap buo/cask-upgrade to install, and brew cu to update your apps. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support pinning, so beware. Otherwise, you can update manually with brew cask remove something && brew cask install something.

Finally, package managers can make migrating to a new computer a breeze. I don’t necessarily trust most migration software, so I tend to want to do it myself. I also like to do clean installs, so any “gunk” my old computer accumulated doesn’t pass on to my new one. To do this, there are three easy steps:

  1. brew list > brew.txt && brew cask list > brewcask.txt && brew tap --list > btlist.txt
  2. Copy brew.txt and brewcask.txt to your new computer.
  3. cat btlist.txt | xargs brew tap && cat brew.txt | xargs brew install && cat brewcask.txt | xargs brew cask install

Now all your software is on the new machine, in three steps and about two minutes worth of work.

Closing Up

Package managers have a bit of a learning curve at first, being command line, but in the end they simplify things a lot. The funny thing is, I actually don’t know how to install most of the software I use, because I never have to choose the installation directory, the options, or set up dependencies. I just type a few words.

Think about how much the app store has simplified things. How instead of having to hunt down a website and a tutorial and check whether the developer is legit and forget to uncheck the box so now Yahoo is your search engine. There’s one, simplified way to do everything, that’s safe and easy. That’s what package managers do.

And it’s beautiful. 🍺