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.
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.
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.
Yes. The package manager's job is to give you some sensible version of some useful common standardized thing(s) you want to use. There might well be some legacy/current/edge options, but overall you are putting your trust in their judgement and assuming that they'll do something at least vaguely sensible.
If you want something specific than that: the package manager cannot help you here. This is no longer some random thing that you just use; it's one of your product's honest-to-goodness dependencies. You can't outsource this any more. You need to make your own arrangements to ensure that the specific version required is in use.
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!
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.
yea, that's why it's not "pro" grade, and that's my point.
"pro" users need EOL version support because sometimes some client still didn't want to update his age old web app the newest node or python or whatever. sometimes it's not up to the dev himself, and he needs to make money either way.
so in the end brew makes decisions for the most common denominator, and that will be the user that uses it to install youtube-dl and nothing more.
“Pro” users are using containers, venvs, version managers (nvm, rvm, etc.). They definitely aren’t installing project-specific stuff directly to the system.
On the other side is some consumer who uses brew to install youtube downloader and doesnt care about versions/upgrades, etc...