NENeckBeardPrince·Dec 19, 2019
This is hardly new. The page you're linking has been in their Github since Oct 2018.
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
In Show HN: Homebrew now auto enables analyticsHomebrew
brew
Ruby2016â2026
Homebrew / brew
brew
đș The Package Manager for Everywhere
158Distinct people
201Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
50.3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
đș The Package Manager for Everywhere
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- homebrew/homebrew-core · linked in 5 of the same discussions
- homebrew/discussions · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8âNov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:01:12 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year201 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-04-04 18:36:42 UTC to 2026-09-13 13:02:51 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repositoryâs dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 47 | 7 | 40 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 16 | 0 | 16 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 29 | 6 | 23 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 36 | 3 | 33 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 1 | 8 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 15 | 3 | 12 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 1 | 8 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 0 | 9 |
What Hacker News says
13 sourcesThis is not new, it's been around since 2016: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/commit/1238c65ba14831bc571c...
In Homebrew 2.2Ah, I found it. On MacOS they rely on sandbox-exec which uses the sandboxing mechanism provided by the kernel:
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/e2c76cce8e01fd80e0910d...
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebre...
In Curl to shell isn't so badA brew recipe is a ruby program that can do anything on your computer. It will and does invoke any number of external processes, including: downloading and executing other recipes, running any number of compilers, arbitrary binary executables, and shell scripts, creating and linking executables, overriding system-provided binaries and libs, etc. etc. etc.
All these recipes and scripts are supposedly downloaded from GitHub. With supposedly anonymous user analytics: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
In Curl to shell isn't so badHomebrew maintainer here. Yes, there have been complaints of poor communication back then, and I feel those complaints were justified.
But weâve also said weâd improve [1] and I feel that the effects already show [2] [3]. Weâve been communicating changes earlier and more clearly lately. Weâve learned a lot from user feedback, and weâre nowhere near the end.
Sad to see you go though! Happy to welcome you back anytime.
[1]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/142#issuecomment-214...
[2]: https://twitter.com/MacHomebrew/status/1119288776830926850
[3]: https://twitter.com/MacHomebrew/status/1119502934000029696
In Thoughts on macOS Package ManagersGood piece.
Homebrew is certainly "opinionated" and, as the article says, "abrasive".
I recently had one of those upgrade chains: new iOS needs new Xcode, new Xcode needs new OS (Mojave), new Xcode and OS need new Boost. All fine up to this point.
I'd installed Boost via Homebrew. So, fine, brew upgrade boost.
A bunch of stuff scrolls past... holy ---- it's upgrading Postgres?
Oh great. Now a whole bunch of work I have stored in a Postgres database is inaccessible. No problem, Homebrew apparently has a Postgres upgrade script now.
Except it wouldn't work, complaining "no upgrade path" from PostGIS 2.4 to 2.5.2; and Homebrew wouldn't install both at the same time. Eventually, after much experimentation, I found Postgres.app came with all the right versions, allowing me to pg_dump it all out.
But my word... while trying to figure this out I
Read the rest
spent hours looking through the issue tracker, and the state of it. Endless snark about "we don't support old versions". Fun like this: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/5675#issuecomment-46...
It's a good tool, just don't expect any support with it, ever. I kind of feel that Homebrew's slogan should be "Homebrew locked as resolved and limited conversation to collaborators".
The slowness of brew isnt ruby's fault. They don't keep a local cache of the taps, but instead searches for taps using an API that interfaces with github and searches local taps, remote taps, then blacklisted taps and then probably something more. It is limited by network speed, not by string searching.
Edit: explained better here: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/3056#issuecomment-32...
In Types will be part of Ruby 3 stdlib sourceAlso: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/5514 - No more HOMEBREW_BUILD_FROM_SOURCE
In Brew stopped accepting custom options for packages and installing from sourceHow exactly is Homebrew not a service? We donate hours of work each week in an honest effort to make the best package manager we can for our users. Analytics help us decide how to prioritize our work.
Itâs also literally the opposite of quietly enabled [1] [2].
[1] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/e32c1515432a938093d5ef...
[2] https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics
In Homebrew 2.0.0 releasedhttps://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/4864
The comment that Mike edited is the last one. Clicking on the "edited by MikeMcQuiad" allows you to see the different versions.
In Homebrew 2.0.0 releasedYeh, we did:
- https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/35169
- https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/5390
In Homebrew 1.9.0Re auto-updating: thanks for that, which is something.
For those who haven't had a chance to dig through, prompted by this, I searched through the man page [1] on GitHub and apparently the environment variable to set is:
HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Manpage.md
In Homebrew 1.9.0From https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/5383:
> This would have avoided Homebrew/homebrew-core#34754
which links to: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/34754
tl;dr One user had binutils force-linked, causing cmake to pick up the user-installed flavor of binutils, altering cmakeâs behavior and causing issues.
In Homebrew 1.9.0