Open Source Package Management Software Homebrew Gains Native Apple Silicon Support

[MacRumors]

Popular macOS package management system Homebrew today received a major update, with the 3.0.0 version introducing official support for Apple silicon chips.

Apple Silicon is now officially supported for installations in /opt/homebrew. formulae.brew.sh formula pages indicate for which platforms bottles (binary packages) are provided and therefore whether they are supported by Homebrew. Homebrew doesn't (yet) provide bottles for all packages on Apple Silicon that we do on Intel x86_64 but we welcome your help in doing so. Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon still provides support for Intel x86_64 in /usr/local.

Homebrew, for those unfamiliar with the software, is a package manager like the Mac App Store. It's designed to let users quickly and easily install, uninstall, and update apps using Terminal.

Prior to now, Homebrew was able to run on M1 Macs through Rosetta 2, but now it works on the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini natively. Homebrew doesn't yet support bottles for all packages on Apple silicon that are available on x86_64, but improvements will be made in the future.

According to Homebrew developer Mike McQuaid, the 3.0.0 development was helped along by MacStadium and Apple, with Apple providing hardware and migration help.

Article Link: Open Source Package Management Software Homebrew Gains Native Apple Silicon Support

 

[aesc80]

Holy crap, yes!!! Now we're getting the good stuff!!! I realize how hard it can be to get tools working on a new platform, so this is definitely appreciated!

 

[EugenesSoggySalami]

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

 

[madmin]

I'll drink to that !

 

[LeeW]

I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

It is great for developers like me. But yes, not much use for general users.

 

[kyeblue]

This is fantastic news, guess the free fortran compiler finally arrived. Still waiting for my MBA(to be shipped on 2/23).

 

[ruka.snow]

Smashing, looking forward to trying it out on Monday. I believe we are just waiting on Docker to automagically build x86 and ARM images and then all is good, though I already have AWS CodeBuild setup to run on pushes to master/main.

As a bonus, Textmate 2 also just got its M1 update. It seems like the perfect time for (non Xcode/Swift) devs to start getting into this.

 

[FishyFish]

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

Just off the top of my head of things I use every day:

awscli, tldr, htop, ncdu, speedtest-cli, pyenv, pyenv-virtualenv, tmux, nvm, node, redis, yarn, git, tree, unrar, wget, docker, httpie, nginx... I'm sure others as well

 

[smithrh]

Great to hear Apple is helping out with this... They could probably do more but this is a start.

 

[aesc80]

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

It's definitely a developer thing. There's a bunch of tools that can be installed freely with Homebrew without having to manage all the different invocations. The general user can stick to the App Store, or whatever other site that offers their apps.

 

[jerryk]

It is great for developers like me. But yes, not much use for general users.

Just curious, what tools are running that you install and manage with homebrew? I do Machine Learning which implies python and C++ libraries and tools.

 

[weup togo]

It is great for developers like me. But yes, not much use for general users.

it's sad that the unix guts of the OS is thought of as "developer stuff"

 

[bsamcash]

YESSSS!!!!

 

[name99]

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

Gotta say MacPorts has always been way more useful for my needs.
(As for what I use from MacPorts, the primary functionality is a set of tools like sox and ffmpeg that I use in a script that speeds up audio and video files by some arbitrary factor (while preserving pitch).

The audio speedup is less essential these days in that Apple gives us some degree of flexibility in audio speedup, though still not that many choices. And while I do the audio speedup I fix it up in other useful ways like companding and silence removal.
Apple has never embraced video speedup (after the days of QuickTime as QuickTime; back when I was on the team we definitely supported it even doing backward playback smoothly. My smooth backward MPEG playback remains the only such implementation I have ever seen.) But if you're watching, eg, video lectures, you want speedup for the same reason you want audio speedup!

 

[Marco Klobas]

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

Well, it all depends on what needs you have. I find the alredy mentioned youtube-dl useful for working reasons.

Another widely used installation is Apache-MySQL/MariaDB-PHP combo.

Homebridge (through Node), Shairport Sync, Exiftool, AWSCli, qpdf, ffmpeg, flac, theora come to my mind, too.

 

[leman]

Very impressive work! I was not expecting support before mid spring, but the team really did the impossible. Shows how much passion there is in the community but also how easy it is to port well-written software to ARM64...

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

I couldn't live without homebrew. If you do software development it's a must.

 

[coolfactor]

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.

Homebrew is not meant to be a normal "application" installer like you may be used to. It's largely for command-line utilities, which are needed by developers. Homebrew can install regular applications, too, but that's not its primary focus.

I've used Homebrew a few times, but keep going back to MacPorts for a simpler experience. As a web applications developer, I run a full suite of Nginx/PHP/MySQL/MongoDB/Redis installations on my system to emulate a live web server, and MacPorts is what I use to install these components.

 

[roar08]

This is awesome.

 

[macdos]

🍺 skål!

 

[macduke]

Oh my heart skipped a beat. I thought it was getting shut down because it wouldn't work on Apple Silicon or something.

 

[yellow8]

Good news! Let's wait for the packages now

 

[performa_6400]

Does this mean NPM will need a similar update?

 

[Stella]

Great Work to the devs!

 

[Stella]

Does this mean NPM will need a similar update?

NPM already works fine and it's JS so apple silicon native already

 

[seek3r]

YES! One of my blockers to picking up an AS machine!