CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosinstallationhomebrewhomebrew-cask
i.o
i.o

Reputation: 63

How to deal with existing installations with Homebrew?

Before installing Homebrew, I had existing installations on my MacBook. For instance, I installed Google Chrome and Node.js as people normally do - by visiting their websites and downloading the .dmg/.pkg files.

Whereas, with Homebrew I would have ran

brew cask install google-chrome
brew install node

To integrate these applications with Homebrew, would I need to uninstall them and reinstall through Homebrew? Can Homebrew detect these existing installations? Is there an advantage to using a package manager?

(My thoughts are migrating them would allow me use brew update to maintain them.)

Upvotes: 6

Views: 8029

Answers (2)

bfontaine
bfontaine

Reputation: 19810

To integrate these applications with Homebrew, would I need to uninstall them and reinstall through Homebrew?

Yes.

Can Homebrew detect these existing installations?

Homebrew can’t manage applications that were installed outside of it. It can detect some installations—for example if Python is installed Homebrew won’t force you to install it again if a formula depends on it—but can’t act on them.

Is there an advantage to using a package manager?

[2024 update following adamency’s comment]
Yes, because the package manager makes it easier to install any app, upgrade or uninstall it (since 2017 brew cask can upgrade apps; before that worked only for plain Homebrew formulas). You don’t need to go on each website to download each app; you just run brew install <whatever>. It’s more automatable and you can use brew-bundle for a faster setup when you get a new machine.

Upvotes: 4

Paul Cav
Paul Cav

Reputation: 48

Just to clarify, Homebrew is a Command Line Interface (CLI) for apps such as python etc and Homebrew-Cask (HBC) is an extension of Homebrew allowing the installation of GUI apps from the CLI.

At present there is no provision for updates using HBC so i have written scripts that take of some issues.

The scripts will create a file that lists the files to be updated including apps that are defined as latest. You can then modify the file to suit your requirements and install updates using my olinst script.

For more information visit my github.

https://github.com/pacav69/homebrew-homebrew-caskroom-offline-installer

Upvotes: -1

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