Homebrew

I got on the Homebrew bandwagon about 24 hours ago — and I like it so far. I haven’t investigated it in any deep way. I’ve just installed a few small things. But it’s simple and it works.

The most recent thing I installed was contacts (which is useful to connect mutt to the OS X Address Book). I could have cloned the repository and built it — but it was so easy to do brew install contacts that I did it that way. And I feel fine about it.

How does that set Homebrew apart from Fink and MacPorts? It may not be that much different — but it feels more modern and less fiddly. Installing was simple. Use is simple. It’s git-based. Formulas are Ruby scripts. There’s no weird /opt folder.

Bonus: it has a delightful typo on the home page, where it says that “Homebrew compliments OS X.” (Italics mine.) I know that complements was meant, but the typo made me think that Homebrew is a nice, polite young person who compliments their elders. Why not?

(I hope they never fix the typo.)