The easiest way to install a number of Unix style applications and open source software onto macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave and earlier Sierra OS versions is via a package manager, unfortunately, macOS Big Sur doesn’t come with one, but fortunately, some good folks care, they come in the form of Homebrew.
The install of Homebrew also works on macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, (High)Sierra, El Capitan, and Yosemite, so macOS 10.10 – 10.14
Homebrew isn’t the only option, also available is MacPorts and Fink but Homebrew is the newest and most popular of the trio.
Install Homebrew
To download install Homebrew run the install script on the command line as below and let the script do its thing:
If you don’t have Apples Xcode Command Line Tools installed it will alert you to that it will install it and carry on with the Homebrew installation and download the Command Line Tools you will need to enter your admin password at some point.
I upgraded to El Capitan, with Homebrew & Ruby, and this is how I did it flawlessly. And Xcode and Java, etc. If you don't already have homebrew installed, do that first, so you don't have to deal with SIP issues.Install all Software Updates available in the Apple Menu, up to and including El Capitan.
- It appears that El Capitan's new security system, 'System Integrity Protection', removes libdvdcss. After disabling SIP, simply reinstall libdvdcss and you're good to go. You might try moving it to /usr/local/lib instead. That's specifically not protected by SIP.
- Step-by-step instructions are provided here to install Homebrew itself and then install Homebrew packages based on the name of formulae specified for installation in a command such as.
Then Homebrew is installed.
After this Homebrew is installed and ready to install other apps.
To get started run brew help can give some command example usage.
To check for any issues with the Homebrew install run:
One issue that typically comes up is an outdated or missing version of Xcode.
For the latest macOS, brew doctor will warn that the Homebrew install won’t be 100% if Xcode is not up to date, so update Xcode from the App Store.
To search for an application:
To install
To list all apps installed by Homebrew
To remove an installed application
To update Homebrew itself
To see what packages are out of date but not to upgrade them
To see what upgrade packages all or singular
To hold a package at a certain version
To release a package from a certain version
To see what else you can do
Where does Homebrew install stuff …. in the Cellar
Where the brew lives.
You can see your Homebrew configuration by running
The output should be similar to …
Homebrew El Capitan System
All installations via Homebrew are filed independently in the filing system in /usr/local/Cellar and linked into /usr/local/bin which is a directory which allows you to run these commands and apps as if part of the regular operating system.
This directory is also out of the SIP bounds so there should be no authentication macOS error dialog boxes.
Remove Home-brew and all packages
To remove the Home-brew installation and all packages it has installed..
HomeBrew is a great package manager just start installing some apps and explore.!
Question or issue on macOS:
I just updated from Yosemite to El Capitan and it has broken one of my C++ programs which was relying on Boost. Whenever I try to compile, I get these errors:
I’ve been compiling it with the correct flags and it worked perfectly before:
I’ve followed the home-brew instructions to chown /usr/local, run brew doctor and brew update, even brew reinstall boost. I’ve also checked and timer.hpp is present in /usr/local/include/boost.
Update Ran: clang++ -E -x c++ – -v < /dev/null
How to solve this problem?
Solution no. 1:
You should install the Xcode Command Line tools with xcode-select --install to get a version of clang that searches /usr/local by default. Otherwise, you’re using the versions provided by Xcode proper, which only search the OS X SDK paths. (/usr/bin/gcc and /usr/bin/g++ both invoke clang and are not actually versions of gcc.)
Homebrew Osx El Capitan
Solution no. 2:
I had the same problem when I upgraded to El Capitan. I solved this problem reinstalling Boost with brew.
If you don’t have brew installed, you can install it with
Then, install boost