Literally just upgraded before seeing this post; I had 31 outdated packages and the first thing I saw was how blazing fast it was! I looked online to see if something changed and saw this post.

Speed was my biggest complaint about brew, so I'm glad to cross that one off my list of things I don't like about brew.

Thank you for your hard work BTW, brew's been a lifesaver on macOS and immutable distros.

Thank you for Linux Homebrew! It works so damn well.

For me the distro package manager is for system packages, Homebrew and Flatpak for the user facing apps.

I don't know what I would do without brew on my Macs. Thank you and everyone who contributes!

Congrats and thank you to you and your team for maintaining critical infrastructure we all take for granted.

Silly question - but how do you apply the cooldown to brew itself ?

I would think this is one of the most critical dependency that you would not want to get right away at let it rest for a couple of days

would you please share what amount of the new dev (work done on brew) is AI/LLM-assisted. this major version bump was very quick to arrive compared to when v6 got released?

I think at one point you said you’re working on a rust rewrite? Is that still in the cards?

I split my usage. Homebrew for OS things mise for the various tooling.

The only problem some things still have a dependency on requiring python and others on the system. The problem being that they’re there, mise works just fine.

Why would you even use python without uv anymore, and have a system python binary and virtual envs linked to it?

I also started using Mise for global CLI tools instead of brew and it’s working really well

Eg: mise use -g gcloud instead of brew install xxx

It can even do that for npm packages! Like mise use -g npm:xxx

Mise is really sloppily vibe coded these days

my split: brew for casks, mise for tools

Yup! We’ve been using it for a really long time at this point.

Were using Bubblewrap on Linux and moved to Landlock this release.

P.S. HUGE fan of your blog and writing Simon, keep up the great work. It’s the #1 resource I recommend to anyone in the industry wanting to learn more about LLMs (and pelicans).

What is the impact of being tier 2?

I’ll update Xcode, but I will definitely not install macOS 27.0

This is a bug, sorry. Working on it.

I didn’t build it. The emoji were my idea. I (and Homebrew) have used them heavily before LLMs did. Maybe LLMs loving them is my fault. Sorry if so.

I don’t get these questions asking if it’s codex or Claude – I see them often. Does it matter? There are other options out there also, it feels strange to ask this. Like asking “is your car a Toyota or a BMW?“

See the release notes: we now have experimental support for using any prefix shorter than the Linux default. We are aiming to eventually fully support (Tier 1) any prefix under 64 bytes long.

The dedicated user isn't really required; it just expects that /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew exists. That can just be a symlink to your home directory. But yes, creating that symlink requires root on most systems. Brew itself doesn't require root or that pathname; you can put packages anywhere, but then many will have to be built from scratch since the pre-built packages don't work. And you need bubblewrap installed (which requires root) to use the sandbox, but again that is optional.

All that said, when you are running without a sandbox installing to a nonstandard location, not everything works consistently. I run this mode all the time. But it has been getting better.

I always download the install script and change the directory to my user home directory, ~/.brew

The dedicated user account is optional.

It uses root once to chown its prefix directory /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew

Sorry we couldn’t support this for longer :(

From the release notes:

> The Intel support decision reflects the limits of a volunteer-run project: Apple have dropped Intel x86_64 support from macOS 27 Golden Gate and GitHub Actions will retire Intel macOS runners in autumn 2027. If Apple and Microsoft’s GitHub, two of the world’s largest technology companies, cannot continue supporting macOS Intel x86_64, sadly neither can Homebrew. MacPorts still supports macOS Intel x86_64 and is likely to provide better results on this platform.

MacPorts is still there for us.

Same boat: 2018 Intel Mac mini, stuck on macOS 10.15.

When I eventually upgrade my hardware, I’ll happily use Homebrew again. In the meantime, MacPorts!

Actually, Homebrew 7 is supported on your Mac, you just have to install Linux to use it. :)

If you want to continue using the same MacBook that will be only path forward when Apple decides to EOL it (if it hasn't already happened).

I'm a long time Homebrew on Linux user, it works really well. I always prefer it over the distro supplied package manager for user facing CLI apps.

I recommend MacPorts, the migration is easy, you copy the package names you installed with brew, uninstall homebrew (there's an unisntall script on brew.sh FAQ section, it will also uninstall all homebrew packages (but not the casks)) then install macports and reinstall the packages with sudo port. Although the selection is smaller on macports and newer packages might not have a prebuilt pkg for your OS so you still might end up building manually (My poor i5 4core had to attempt building nodejs26 because there wasn't a pkg for Ventura)

I've used MacPorts on macOS versions that don't support the latest OS, which per homebrew policy seems to be versions upto N-2.

Apart from the issue of having to compile the downloaded software leading to spinning fans, I'm not too concerned.

MacPorts has been there this whole time.

How long do you expect them to support Intel processors though? It’s been like 6 years since the last MacBook release had any Intel processor, and Apple doesn’t make OS updates anymore, so it doesn’t surprise me that Homebrew stopped too.

I’m installing Linux on my 2019 16” today.

Same here, but I understand their position. Meanwhile I rely on packages publishing builds for Intel Mac in GitHub (surprisingly a lot) or building from source code. I just asked AI to build me install system.

FYI Macos will also stop with major updates for Intel macs. You can just keep using brew 6 on macos 26.

You do realize Intel support is gone, right? You won't be installing anything on your Intel Mac very soon...

Have you tried Mac Ports?

For initial installation to the default prefix someone needs to create the home directory and that person is probably root.

We hope to allow all prefixes under 64 bytes in future.

I have this bound to an alias: bu

Run it every couple of days, easy peasy.

https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-Security-and-Supply-Chain

We take supply chain security very seriously, moreso than many package managers.

How is that any different from PyPI, npm, cargo, etc?