Homebrew is a free package manager for macOS and helps you to manage software in your Mac. You can install the software you need through command line in no time. There is no need to download DMG files and drag it to your applications folder. It makes the process of installing and uninstalling software so muck easier and faster.

Developers using Linux environment prefer to install software from command line – since there is no need to browse over internet, download the executable, run it and then delete the executable once the software has been installed. This is lot of work especially when you need to install a number of softwares!

In Windows world, you can leverage a package manager called as Chocolatey. It is a command line installer – which will allow you to install/uninstall/update programs in the background requiring minimal user interaction.

How to install Homebrew?

Installing Homebrew is simple. Paste the below command in your Terminal window and press ‘Enter’ —

/usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”

Once it is complete, you can run the below command in the Terminal window and can confirm that Homebrew is installed properly —

$ brew –version
Homebrew 1.4.3
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 8209; last commit 2018-01-14)

brew cask search — It will search all possible packages that are available.

brew cask list — It will list all the packages that are currently installed in your machine.

You can also install Cask – a separate repository.

Homebrew-Cask extends Homebrew and brings its elegance, simplicity, and speed to the installation and management of GUI macOS applications such as Atom and Google Chrome.

Check the below link for further information on Homebrew-Cask :

https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask#learn-more

Once you have cask installed, you can install/uninstall software packages in your system quickly —

brew cask install google-chrome

==> Satisfying dependencies

==> Downloading https://dl.google.com/chrome/mac/stable/GGRO/googlechrome.dmg

Already downloaded: /Users/sbehara1/Library/Caches/Homebrew/Cask/google-chrome–63.0.3239.132.dmg

==> Verifying checksum for Cask google-chrome

==> Installing Cask google-chrome

==> Moving App ‘Google Chrome.app’ to ‘/Applications/Google Chrome.app’.

🍺  google-chrome was successfully installed!

brew cask uninstall google-chrome

==> Satisfying dependencies

==> Downloading https://download.sublimetext.com/Sublime%20Text%20Build%203143.dmg

######################################################################## 100.0%

==> Verifying checksum for Cask sublime-text

==> Installing Cask sublime-text

==> Moving App ‘Sublime Text.app’ to ‘/Applications/Sublime Text.app’.

==> Linking Binary ‘subl’ to ‘/usr/local/bin/subl’.

Conclusion 

Generally to install softwares,  you tend to download an exe or msi file, and then follow the installation steps provided mostly by clicking ‘Next’ buttons. Package managers like Chocolatey for Windows and Homebrew for MacOS are built to give you a completely new experience for software installations and make your lives lot easier.

Categories: AWS, MacOS