homebrew

Have you ever wondered where Homebrew puts the binaries from brew packages that are installed on a Mac? If you’re a Homebrew user, you may be interested in knowing where Homebrew puts everything and where to find the installed brew packages in Mac OS.

We’ll show you the directory path where Homebrew keeps packages, and also share a few other ways to see what and where Homebrew has installed anything onto a Mac.

This is obviously aimed at more advanced Mac users who rely on the command line and Homebrew, and this won’t be applicable to anyone else. If you’re interested in installing Homebrew you can learn about that here.

Where Homebrew Packages Are Installed on Mac OS: the Homebrew Installation Path

By default, Homebrew will install all packages into the following directory in all versions of Mac OS:

/usr/local/Cellar/

Additionally, Homebrew places symlinks into the following directory path:

/usr/local/opt/

The symbolic links of binaries found in /usr/local/opt/ all point to their respective package in /usr/local/Cellar/ as can be confirmed with ls and the -l flag:

ls -l /usr/local/opt/

The screenshot example demonstrates the symbolic links pointing from /usr/local/opt/ to /usr/local/Cellar/ for each individual brew package:

Thus you can use the ls command to list all Homebrew packages installed on a Mac simply by showing the full directory listing:

ls /usr/local/Cellar

How to Find Specific Homebrew Package Installation Information

Now that you know where Homebrew generally stores packages, you can also learn more specifics about particular packages. We’ll show you a few commands to print the exact path of a specific brew package, and also show you how to get additional detailed information about particular Homebrew packages installed on the Mac.

How to Find Exactly Where a Homebrew Package is Installed

If you want the exact path to where a Homebrew package is installed reported back to you via command line, the simplest method is to use the –prefix flag and point it at a particular Homebrew package on the Mac, this will reveal the location where it is installed:

brew --prefix [package]

For example, using the package ‘wget’ we can get the following information immediately:

$ brew --prefix wget
/usr/local/opt/wget

As you can see in the command output, only the installation path for that Homebrew package is shown.

How to Get Detailed Homebrew Package Information

If you’re interested in getting more detailed information about a specific Homebrew package that has been installed, including where the Homebrew package came from, what it is, when it was installed, the path where the brew package is installed, as well as information about that packages dependencies and what other packages are required to use it. This is achieved by using the ‘info’ flag with brew to point it at a specific package, using the following syntax:

brew info [package]

For example, if you wanted to get information about the Homebrew package “wget” then you would issue the following command:

brew info wget

Hitting return will detail information about the brew package. Example output of such a command for ‘wget’ may look like the following:

$ brew info wget
wget: stable 1.19.5 (bottled), HEAD
Internet file retriever
https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/
/usr/local/Cellar/wget/1.19.4_1 (50 files, 3.8MB) *
Poured from bottle on 2018-05-07 at 10:59:31
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/wget.rb
==> Dependencies
Build: pkg-config
Required: libidn2, openssl
Optional: pcre libmetalink gpgme
==> Options
--with-debug
Build with debug support

The ‘brew info’ command obviously reveals significantly more information than simply the installation path of the package, so if you simply want the exact path of an installed brew package the –prefix command may be easier for scripting or other purposes. Nonetheless the full ‘brew info’ command output is incredibly useful to get extensive information about any installed package and it has obvious value for that reason, in addition to showing where something is installed.

Try these commands yourself with any Homebrew package. If you followed our prior articles about installing Homebrew on the Mac and then checked out some of the popular Homebrew packages available, or perhaps updated to Python 3 or installed node.js and npm through Homebrew, these tips will work to show you the installation path of those packages, as well as other noteworthy package information.

Do you have interesting advice or information to share on finding where Homebrew installs packages onto a Mac, or retrieving package details? Share with us in the comments below!

Related

If you’re an advanced Mac user who spends a considerable amount of time at the command line, you likely have Homebrew installed by now. So, how about sharing a list of some of the best Homebrew packages available for Mac users?

We’ve discussed Homebrew many times before, but essentially it makes installing additional command line tools easier than ever, as there is no compiling necessary and it handles dependencies for you. Even if you don’t have Homebrew installed, this list of some of the more helpful Homebrew packages and tools may inspire you to get Homebrew on your Mac.

To get any use from this list you’ll want to be a reasonably advanced command line user, and you’ll obviously need to install Homebrew on the Mac if you haven’t done so yet. Then you’re ready to go and enjoy the collection. And don’t forget to share your own favorite Homebrew packages in the comments too.

In no particular order, here are some of the top Homebrew packages for Mac:

cask

Cask allows you to easy install Mac OS GUI apps and binaries directly from the command line using Homebrew. First you install cask, and then you can install normal Mac apps directly from the command line.

brew install cask

For example, once you have cask, if you want to install Chrome from the command line, then Cask can do that with with a command like the following:

brew cask install google-chrome

Or maybe you want to install iterm2 so you can have that cool drop-down command line available from anywhere:

brew cask install iterm2

Cask can install tons of applications in Mac OS without needing to download them individually from various websites and then going through the typical drag-and-drop install routine.

Note that Cask has some limitations, for example it can’t install anything from the Mac App Store, and Cask is not able to install software updates to the Mac like the ‘softwareupdate’ command is able to, but that doesn’t make it any less useful of a tool for advanced Mac users.

htop

htop is a system resource monitor for the command line. htop is basically a superior version of ‘top’, with a nice visual indicator of process activity, CPU activity, memory usage, load average, and process management. You can kind of think of it like Activity Monitor for the command line, though many command line users would argue it’s even more useful than Activity Monitor is.

brew install htop

We’ve discussed installing htop on the Mac before, it’s really a fantastic tool that deserves to be a part of any command line toolbox.

wget

wget can download data from the web and ftp, making it one of the best tools out there to download anything via the command line. Whether you want to download just a single file from somewhere, or you want to download an entire directory or even mirror a full website, wget can do it for you.

brew install wget

You can also install wget without Homebrew, but if you’re reading this article you likely already have Homebrew.

nmap

nmap is a top notch network security scanner. It can find network assets, discover services and hosts on local networks, perform port scans, map a network (hence the name), detect operating systems and versions of software on clients and servers, and so much more. It’s an excellent tool for systems administrators, network admins, security researchers, and anyone else who needs to dabble in network scanning activity.

brew install nmap

You can also get nmap for Mac as a disk image in a self contained binary if you’d rather not deal with home-brew, but again, we’re talking about homebrew here.

Oh and if the concept of nmap appeals to you but the command line is far over your head or too cumbersome, then you can use Network Utility on Mac OS to perform port scans, finger, whois, trace route, ping, and much more, all from a friendlier GUI app.

links

links and lynx are command line web browsers, allowing you full web access (well, as long as there’s text to navigate) from the command line. This is useful for many reasons whether researching and web browsing from a terminal window, or even for testing web site functionality and compatibility with alternate browsers and for alternate use cases. I’m partial to ‘links’ but ‘lynx’ is good too, or you can install both.

brew install links

We’ve discussed lynx before macports, and you can also get lynx with image support if you’re interested, but again if you have Homebrew installed then it’s a piece of cake to install through the command line.

geoiplookup

geoip gives you geolocation data for an inputted IP address. This is useful for network and systems administrators, web workers, security researchers, and much more.

brew install geoip

If you ever wondered where a particular IP is located in the world and to what ISP it belongs, then geoip is for you.

irssi

Do you like to chat on IRC? Want to be told to ‘rtfm’ when you ask a question in #linux? Then irssi is for you, because it’s arguably the best irc client for the command line (or perhaps in general, sorry ircii, mirc, and ircle).

brew install irssi

/join away!

bash-completion

If you use the bash shell, then bash-completion is likely something you’re either familiar with or soon will be since it dramatically improves command completion and is programable. Personally I’m partial to zsh which also has great completion capabilities, but bash-completion makes bash much more useful, so if you’re a bash fan then check it out if it sounds appealing to you.

brew install bash-completion

Oh and this probably goes without saying but if you changed your shell at some point in Terminal app then you’d want to use bash to get any use out of bash-completion.

watch

The watch command is super useful to keep a continuous eye on another process. For example you can use watch to track disk usage or IO, or virtual memory usage, or anything else, updating the command output every few seconds. This is one of those great tools for administrators but it’s useful for many other purposes too.

brew install watch

Home-brew isn’t the only approach for watch, you can also install watch on Mac OS using MacPorts, from source, or as a precompiled binary too.

What do you think? Do you have any particularly favorite Homebrew packages? Share your own top Homebrew packages, tricks, installs, and add-ons in the comments below!

Related

Advanced Mac users may appreciate using the Homebrew package manager, which greatly simplifies the process of installing command line software and tools on a Mac.

For example, if you want to easily install favorite command line tools on a Mac like cask, htop, wget, nmap, tree, irssi, links, colordiff, or virtually any other familiar unix command line utility, you can do so with a simple command. Homebrew downloads and builds the package for you.

This is obviously aimed at more technically savvy Mac users who spend a lot of time at the command line. While there’s no particular issue for novice users installing Homebrew on their Mac, the odds of novices finding it useful are slim, unless they intend to embark on learning the command line environment. Contrast that to power users who practically live in a terminal environment, whether longtime Mac users or migrating to the platform from the Windows or Linux world, who will immediately see the value of Homebrew.

Requirements for Installing Homebrew on Mac OS

prerequisites to installing Homebrew on a Mac include the following:

• A Mac running Mac OS X 10.10 or later, though earlier versions are sort of supported
• Command Line Tools must be installed on the Mac (either independently or through Xcode)
• Knowledge of the command line and using bash or zsh

Assuming you’re interested in installing Homebrew and meet those requirements, then the rest is equally straight forward.

How to Install Homebrew on Mac OS

The simplest way to install Homebrew is through ruby and curl, accomplished with a single command. This approach is the same for installing Homebrew in all supported versions of Mac OS and Mac OS X.

1. Open the “Terminal” application, found in /Applications/Utilities/
2. Enter the following command into a single line of the terminal:

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


3. Hit Return and you’ll see a series of lines about what the script will install and where, hit Return again to agree or hit Escape to cancel
4. Enter the administrator password (required by sudo execution) to begin installation

Installation of Homebrew will take a while depending on the speed of your Mac and internet connection, as each necessary package is downloaded and installed by the script.

When complete, you will see an “Installation successful!” message.

Now you’re ready to install software packages through Homebrew, or you can read the help documentation with the following command:

brew help

Installing Software Packages through Homebrew on Mac

Installing packages with Homebrew is super easy, just use the following syntax:

brew install [package name]

For example, to install wget through Homebrew you could use the following syntax:

brew install wget

Simple, easy. Once complete you can run wget as usual.

A quick side note; Homebrew is not the only way to install command line software, you can install command line tools on a Mac yourself and then compile and make software independently. For example, we discuss installing wget on Mac OS without Homebrew here and it uses the typical configure and make process. There’s nothing wrong with that approach (and arguably it might be preferable for users who want limited packages and a slimmer footprint) but if you’re accustomed to a package manager like dpkg, apt-get, or rpm you’ll almost certainly appreciate and prefer to use Homebrew.

How to Disable Hombebrew Analytics Tracking

Homebrew now defaults to using anonymized behavioral analytics tracking. If you do not want to participate in that or you’d just rather disable the feature to reduce network traffic or for privacy purposes, or whatever other reason, you can run the following command after successfully installing Homebrew on a Mac. This will opt out of Homebrew analytics:

brew analytics off

Hit return and after a moment or so the analytics tracking in Homebrew will be disabled.

How to Remove HomeBrew from a Mac

If you have installed Homebrew but later decide you want to remove Homebrew from a Mac for some reason or another, you can uninstall it with another ruby script run from the command line:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall)"

Alternatively, you could download that “uninstall” script directly and run it yourself.

Enjoy Homebrew!

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