Comment by tacker2000
3 months ago
im talking about developers for example, that may need specific/old versions of php or node or whatever, which then get deprecated and uninstallable via brew as soon as they officially reach EOL. Or once installed, get forcefully and inadvertently updated by brew.
On the other side is some consumer who uses brew to install youtube downloader and doesnt care about versions/upgrades, etc...
If you are a developer who needs a specific old version of PHP or Node or whatever and you're not using Docker then I have great news for you on how you can solve your problem.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
yes, docker is a great solution nowadays for this problem, but it wasnt always like that. In PHP land there is a tool called Laravel Valet, which relies heavily on homebrew and lets you switch PHP versions on the fly directly your system. I just remember how much of a pain it was to set up because of homebrew's unnecessary restrictions and deprecations. But once done it worked quite well.
so don't use brew at all? Great, what else should we not use?
I personally use and enjoy Homebrew for most of my development tasks. The thing I would not use it for is to exactly simulate a specific combination of tool versions.
2 replies →
brew install php@X.Y doesn’t work for you?
Although I should say that I haven’t tried to go back many major versions, I wonder if they provide 7.x for example.
It works until PHP officially EOLs the version. Then brew stops supporting it and you have to install some finicky 3rd party taps/repos to get the older versions. A huge pain...
In the real world there are still apps running PHP 7.4 and even older!
I seriously can't accept this as valid criticism.
Homebrew not allowing users to install EOL versions of software with no security patches or updates is a _good_ idea. Just because a fraction of a tiny minority needs some ancient version of PHP doesn't make it a good idea.
2 replies →