[HN Gopher] Workbrew
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       Workbrew
        
       Author : cglong
       Score  : 47 points
       Date   : 2024-07-27 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (workbrew.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (workbrew.com)
        
       | DamonHD wrote:
       | A smart idea. I just bumped up my Patreon monthly for Homebrew to
       | add some power to their elbow!
        
       | ComputerGuru wrote:
       | MacPorts is strictly superior to HomeBrew and does not take the
       | same eff you stance towards its users that HB has in the past.
        
         | TheCleric wrote:
         | Genuine question: in what ways have they been hostile to their
         | users? I use it all the time and haven't noticed anything
         | (which isn't to say you're wrong, I just haven't seen it).
        
           | cglong wrote:
           | Once your macOS version reaches n-3, you start seeing this
           | message constantly
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37665120
        
             | michaelt wrote:
             | Why must the makers of this platform for keeping software
             | up-to-date be so obsessed with people running up-to-date
             | software?
        
             | dewey wrote:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37672354
             | 
             | The entitlement of users calling open source maintainers
             | that try to limit the surface area of support tickets to
             | the systems that provably 95% of users are on "user
             | hostile" is always sad to see.
        
               | refulgentis wrote:
               | The sociopathy of people who pretend "it's user-hostile
               | to be told you can never speak of running this on an OS
               | version > 2 years old. Ever. All attempts will be
               | deleted" is "expecting endless support for free products
               | that I'm not paying for or contributing to."
               | 
               | I reject your name-calling via a strawman, though I
               | support the message.
        
             | jzb wrote:
             | Is that it? That just reads to me like a project that's
             | tired of getting bug reports from people on old versions of
             | software.
        
           | m463 wrote:
           | telemetry by default
        
           | ComputerGuru wrote:
           | They caused a huge commotion some years back when they
           | removed the entire concept of variants from ports/formulas,
           | removing the ability to set any build time options
           | whatsoever, breaking all patches for older platforms, etc.
           | maintainer was quite rude about it when asked to reconsider
           | by huge numbers of users that could no longer use the
           | software.
        
         | pineapple_sauce wrote:
         | The last time I used MacPorts it fell out of popularity and did
         | not have nearly as many packages as Homebrew had. It's
         | unfortunate. Homebrew is dogshit slow.
        
       | awinter-py wrote:
       | homebrew the package manager that is literally built on git yet
       | still doesn't have version pinning or versioning for most
       | packages so that you have to host your own copies of public
       | packages to use the old one?
       | 
       | or a different homebrew
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | And when they do support multiple versions, like MySQL, have
         | fun with your data. All versions hardcode the same path in the
         | service file. Your data is now accidentally upgraded and/or
         | corrupted.
        
         | MarkMarine wrote:
         | When I maintained an app that used homebrew for the Mac users,
         | I kept my homebrew in a different, self contained path off the
         | user's path, and maintained my own repo of every package so I
         | could pin versions and not break the user's install.
         | 
         | Codifying this crap UX, always deploying head to a dev's
         | machine, setting packages on a dev's computer and path in some
         | privileged manner that I as a dev using the machine can't
         | control... it's terrible.
         | 
         | I should have full control over the development packages on my
         | machine, the environment, etc. fine, put some memory hog
         | scanning crapware on there if it makes IT feel like they are
         | doing something... but don't touch my path and my dev
         | environment
        
       | vslira wrote:
       | As a user of Homebrew I'm glad and rooting for the team to find
       | financial sustainability for such an important piece of software.
        
       | dmattia wrote:
       | I used to like using homebrew on personal machines. But then as
       | the person in charge of the dev environments at my company, I
       | tried using homebrew packages for our devs but it just went
       | horribly because homebrew don't have old versions.
       | 
       | - Different folks ran `brew install <foo>` at a different time?
       | They may see different behavior
       | 
       | - I ran `brew install <foo>` after a coworker did? I may not be
       | able to replicate whatever issues they are facing
       | 
       | - Someone new ran `brew install <foo>` on their new laptop? They
       | may have an entirely separate major version of that library with
       | breaking changes.
       | 
       | - Do I know if folks are using vulnerable, old packages? Nope!
       | 
       | - Does production use some database with version X, but homebrew
       | only supports a client for version Y? Eh whatever, just have
       | folks locally use version Y. What could possibly go wrong with
       | using a different version locally vs in production.
       | 
       | I kept our own homebrew tap for a while and pinned versions. That
       | was fine. But then I had to maintain that tap, and there wasn't
       | any easy way I found for checking if the versions we kept in that
       | tap had any vulnerabilities on any registry I could find.
       | 
       | Then I found Github Codespaces / devcontainers, switched everyone
       | to use Linux inside Docker, used linux package managers to
       | install pinned versions of everything we needed (using the same
       | exact packages as we bundle into production), and scan my
       | containers using a container vulnerability scanner nightly.
       | 
       | Instantly, 10+ hours of work per week for me vanished and I can
       | now at least reproduce problems and fix them for everyone when
       | they come up.
        
         | mynegation wrote:
         | All valid concerns and I suspect Workbrew is slated to address
         | exactly those issues.
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-27 23:16 UTC)