Distributing Your Own Scripts via Homebrew

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

ingve

80 points

14 comments

justin.searls.coTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

HomebrewPackage ManagementCLI Tools

Key topics

Homebrew

Package Management

CLI Tools

The post explains how to distribute personal scripts via Homebrew, sparking a discussion on the benefits and best practices of using Homebrew for package management, as well as comparisons to other tools like Nix.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Active discussion

First comment

Peak period

48-60h

Avg / period

4.7

Comment distribution14 data points

Loading chart...

Based on 14 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Sep 8, 2025 at 6:36 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Sep 10, 2025 at 1:20 PM EDT
2d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
12 comments in 48-60h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Sep 13, 2025 at 2:59 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (14 comments)

Showing 14 comments

darkamaul

4 months ago

2 replies

Really informative read, I agree that Homebrew’s naming conventions can be frustrating at times, but overall it’s such a great tool.

I hadn’t realized it was this simple to spin up your own tap for distributing tools. How does this compare to using language specific tools (like uv, for example)? Is it better because that’s easier for folks not within the ecosystem ?

thewisenerd

4 months ago

1 reply

specifically for python packages,

while it's lightweight, shipping the kitchen sink (uv) is a no-go

so, it's a venv, with the pinned dependencies installed [0], a random example of how this looks like, here [1]

(specifically for uv; i tried to get `brew update-python-resources` and `homebrew-pypi-poet` working for a "private" package, it didn't really work; so i went ahead and created uvbrew [2] instead to help with the resource generation)

[0]: https://docs.brew.sh/Python-for-Formula-Authors [1]: https://github.com/hynek/homebrew-tap/blob/main/Formula/doc2... [2]: https://github.com/thewisenerd/uvbrew

thewisenerd

4 months ago

1 reply

that said, it's _really_ easy to have executables against random sdist with `uv run --with`.

here's something that i was writing just yesterday:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    PYSTABLE="3.13"
    SERVER="..."
    PACKAGE="xyz"
    VERSION="0.1.3"
    exec uv run --python "$PYSTABLE" --with "$SERVER/$PKG-$VERSION.tar.gz" "$PKG" "$@"

andrewaylett

4 months ago

Now stick the wrapper in a git repo, get Renovate to bump the version numbers, automagic release on new version, and have Brew install the wrapper.

searls

4 months ago

Thanks!

To answer your question, other tools with package registries typically require accounts, increasingly 2FA, often encourage some sort of signing step. Having GitHub's ToS serve as the source of trust really simplifies things for the Homebrew team

loozhengyuan

4 months ago

1 reply

IMO it might be more ideal to do the updates from the tap side, similar to how upstream does it. This workflow[1] allows you handle updates even for formulae/casks you do not own. Using the `brew bump` command, you scan all formulae/casks and create PRs that update them. In these PRs[2], you can use the `brew test-bot` command to ensure the updates are tested working.

[1]: https://github.com/loozhengyuan/homebrew-tap/blob/main/.gith...

[2]: https://github.com/loozhengyuan/homebrew-tap/pull/11

searls

4 months ago

This is a good idea. I'm so used to being miserly about my action minute allotment that this didn't occur to me until I realized that OSS time is free still (I think?)

jbreckmckye

4 months ago

1 reply

A small tip for Go folk: the Goreleaser tool makes it very easy to manage your formulae, at least for distributing binaries (allowed in personal taps but a no-no in core)

latchkey

4 months ago

I didn't know this until recently, but it now supports multiple languages.

"First-class support for Go, Rust, TypeScript, Python, and Zig projects."

wyattjoh

4 months ago

1 reply

I wrote my own version of the homebrew tap bumping workflow for GitHub Actions: https://github.com/wyattjoh/homebrew-bump-revision I use it for some of my personal projects

searls

4 months ago

Nice! I was too lazy but looks good

xyst

4 months ago

I switched to nix to manage my systems and haven’t looked back. The only thing lacking is a single dependency on shitty windows for multiplayer gaming.

frou_dh

4 months ago

There was actually an episode of the Ruby Rogues podcast released only a few days after this post that touched on much of the same stuff:

https://topenddevs.com/podcasts/ruby-rogues/episodes/distrib...

PufPufPuf

4 months ago

Fun fact about packaging Python tools: It turns out that there are Python packages that aren't compatible with Homebrew due to cycles in build dependencies. While this is no problem for pip, as it just downloads binary releases, Homebrew builds ALL of the dependencies from scratch. And yeah, that also means that modestly sized Python projects may take over an hour to build the "bottle".

View full discussion on Hacker News

ID: 45166655Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 3:10:53 PM

Want the full context?

Jump to the original sources

Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.

Open link View on HN