homebrew how to use versions tap

Question

Following some online directions to install older versions of formulae, get this:

% brew tap homebrew/versions

Error: homebrew/versions was deprecated. This tap is now empty and all its contents were either deleted or migrated.

What does this mean and where have they migrated to/what to do now as its alternative?

Answer 1

The packages/formulae in tap homebrew/versions are merged into homebrew-core. If you wanna find an old version of a package. Just search it in the homebrew-core tap,

❯ brew search go
==> Formulae
algol68g                                  go@1.14                                   googler                                   mongo-orchestration
anycable-go                               go@1.9  
...
go@1.10                                   google-benchmark                          libgosu                                   wireguard-go
go@1.11                                   google-java-format                        lunchy-go                                 write-good
go@1.12                                   google-sparsehash                         mongo-c-driver
go@1.13 

Basically all old package are migrated as package@X.Y in homebrew-core.

BTW, homebrew-core is the default tap included after homebrew installation.