brew/share/doc/homebrew/Tips-N'-Tricks.md

Tips N' Tricks

Installing previous versions of formulae

The preferred and supported method of installing specific versions of formulae is to use the homebrew/versions tap. If the version you’re looking for isn’t available, consider opening a pull request!

Installing directly from pull-requests

You can browse pull requests https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pulls and install through the direct link. For example Python 3.3.0 pull request https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/15199

brew install https://raw.github.com/dsr/homebrew/9b22d42f50fcbc5e52c764448b3ac002bc153bd7/Library/Formula/python3.rb

Quickly remove something from /usr/local

brew unlink $FORMULA

This can be useful if a package can't build against the version of something you have linked into /usr/local.

And of course, you can simply brew link $FORMULA again afterwards!

Activate a previously installed version of a formula

brew info $FORMULA
brew switch $FORMULA $VERSION

Use brew info $FORMULA to check what versions are installed but not currently activated, then brew switch $FORMULA $VERSION to activate the desired version. This can be useful if you would like to switch between versions of a formula.

Install into Homebrew without formulas

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/foo/1.2 && make && make install && brew link foo

Command tab-completion

Bash

Add to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile (whichever you have configured to run on shell startup):

source $(brew --repository)/Library/Contributions/brew_bash_completion.sh

Zsh

Run in terminal (may require sudo):

ln -s "$(brew --prefix)/Library/Contributions/brew_zsh_completion.zsh" /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions

Pre-downloading a file for a formula

Sometimes it's faster to download a file via means other than those strategies that are available as part of Homebrew. For example, Erlang provides a torrent that'll let you download at 4–5× the normal HTTP method.

Download the file and drop it in ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew, but watch the file name. Homebrew downloads files as {{ formula name }}-{{ version }}. In the case of Erlang, this requires renaming the file from otp_src_R13B03 to erlang-R13B03.

brew --cache -s erlang will print the correct name of the cached download. This means instead of manually renaming a formula, you can run mv the_tarball $(brew --cache -s $FORMULA).

You can also pre-cache the download by using the command brew fetch formula which also displays the SHA1 and SHA256 values. This can be useful for updating formulae to new versions.

Using Homebrew behind a proxy

Behind the scenes, Homebrew uses several commands for downloading files (e.g. curl, git, svn). Many of these tools can download via a proxy. It's a common (though not universal) convention for these command-line tools to observe getting the proxy parameters from environment variables (e.g. http_proxy). Unfortunately, most tools are inconsistent in their use of these environment parameters (e.g. curl supports http_proxy, HTTPS_PROXY, FTP_PROXY, GOPHER_PROXY, ALL_PROXY, NO_PROXY).

Luckily, for the majority of cases setting http_proxy is enough. You can set this environment variable in several ways (search on the internet for details), including at runtime:

http_proxy=http://<proxyhost>:<proxyport> brew install $FORMULA

Proxy Authentication

http_proxy=http://<user>:<password>@<proxyhost>:<proxyport>  brew install $FORMULA

Installing stuff without the Xcode-CLT

$ brew sh          # or: eval $(brew --env)
$ gem install ronn # or c-programs

This imports the brew environment into your existing shell, gem will pick up the environment variables and be able to build. As a bonus brew's automatically determined optimization flags are set.

Install only a formula's dependencies (not the formula)

brew install --only-dependencies $FORMULA

Interactive Homebrew Shell

$ brew irb
1.8.7 :001 > Formula.factory("ace").methods - Object.methods
 => [:install, :path, :homepage, :downloader, :stable, :bottle, :devel, :head, :active_spec, :buildpath, :ensure_specs_set, :url, :version, :specs, :mirrors, :installed?, :explicitly_requested?, :linked_keg, :installed_prefix, :prefix, :rack, :bin, :doc, :include, :info, :lib, :libexec, :man, :man1, :man2, :man3, :man4, :man5, :man6, :man7, :man8, :sbin, :share, :etc, :var, :plist_name, :plist_path, :download_strategy, :cached_download, :caveats, :options, :patches, :keg_only?, :fails_with?, :skip_clean?, :brew, :std_cmake_args, :deps, :external_deps, :recursive_deps, :system, :fetch, :verify_download_integrity, :fails_with_llvm, :fails_with_llvm?, :std_cmake_parameters, :mkdir, :mktemp]
1.8.7 :002 >

Hiding the beer mug emoji when finishing a build

export HOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI=1

This sets the HOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI environment variable, causing Homebrew to hide all emoji.

The beer emoji can also be replaced with other character(s):

export HOMEBREW_INSTALL_BADGE="☕️ 🐸"

Editor plugins

Sublime Text

In Sublime Text 2/3, you can use Package Control to install Homebrew-formula-syntax, which adds highlighting for inline patches.

Vim

brew.vim adds highlighting to inline patches in Vim.

Emacs

homebrew-mode provides syntax highlighting for inline patches as well as a number of helper functions for editing formula files.