FAQ

How do I update my local packages.

First update the formulas and homebrew itself:

brew update

afterwards install newer versions of updated packages with

brew install $(brew outdated)

How do I contribute to Homebrew?

See the Formula Cookbook.

bad interpreter: /usr/bin/ruby^M: no such file or directory

You cloned with git, and your git configuration is set to use Windows line endings. Don’t do that.

bad interpreter: /usr/bin/ruby

You don’t have a /usr/bin/ruby or it is not executable. It’s not recommended to let this persist, you’d be surprised how many .apps, tools and scripts expect your OS X provided files and directories to be unmodified since OS X was installed.

Why are you compiling everything?

We optimise for your Mac. But we try not compile stuff that takes ages but the availability of binary packages dictates that. We don’t host our own binaries to keep costs zero. If you want to donate hosting to the project, please let mxcl know.

How about Gentoo Prefix?

Gentoo Prefix seems pretty cool, but it isn’t optimised specfically for Mac users and it duplicates worse than MacPorts, including gcc and all that jazz. Otherwise I’d use it.

How do I get a formula from someone else’s branch?

gem install github
cd $(brew --prefix)
github pull someone_else