Wednesday Quickie

Installing Home Brew Repository On Mac OS X

  This is an odd quickie for me, since I have already done 2 blogs on updating components of the Unix side of Mac OS X operating system using the Home Brew repository.  While writing this weeks technical blog I found that once again I was having to use Home Brew to install a key library in order to compile the application.  Instead of duplicating my work for the third time, I decided to make a ‘stub’ article of the installation instructions  that can be used as sort of a module for any future articles that may require the use of Homebrew. 

   If you use Linux, you are already familiar with a software repository, and package management software.  Red Hat and CentOS uses yum and rpm, while Unbunto Linux uses apt-get or Synaptic.  For us OS X users, the only software repository most of us are familiar with is the App store, which allows us to purchase, install software and manage their updates.  Homebrew is basically an App Store for software packages created, compiled, and maintained by the community and are free of charge. 

To install, open your web browser and go to brew.sh, verify the install link has not changed.

Open a terminal window by launching the terminal.app, which is located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app.  You can use the Shift – Command – U key shortcut as well. 

Once your terminal window opens download and run the installer as user with administrative access.

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

If the script needs to elevate privledges, it will ask for your password.The installer will also install XCode Command Line Tools, if not already installed.

Once completed, you can test the install by performing the following command.

$ man brew

If you can list the man pages the homebrew repository is now successfully installed.  You may now use your browsers back button and continue with the rest of the installation instructions.

  We hope you enjoyed this weeks quickie and will come back Sunday for this weeks feature technical article “Using Xcode Command Line Tools To Compile CGTerm for Mac OS X”