In this article, learn about installing a package manager. If you missed it, check out the first article in the series where we learned about using your terminal. This article builds upon that foundation.
What is a Package Manager
A package manager is a piece of software that helps to install software and
manage updates for your system. For me, the first thing that I do with a new
machine is install Homebrew. Homebrew
is my preferred
package manager for macOS.
Why
A package manager is nice because often software relies / requires other dependencies in order to work properly. By using a package manager it will make sure that the correct dependencies are installed for the software that you need to run. It allows you to be able to update and manage software through a centralized interface.
Installation
Installation is simple. Open up your terminal and enter the following command (easiest to just copy / paste from the homepage linked above).
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
This will prompt you for your password in order to create some directories and
install the required software for brew to work. The installation may take some
time, while it downloads the command line tools for Xcode.
When completed, follow the Next Steps and copy / paste the command listed,
that should look like below.
(echo; echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> /Users/<you>/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"
The first line of this command sets up some things in your shell profile (which
we have not discussed yet) that will make Homebrew available to you anytime
you start a new session in your terminal. The second line of the command makes
it available in your current terminal session.
Next run the following command and make sure that everything is setup correctly.
brew doctor
Which should output the following:
Your system is ready to brew.
Terminology
Homebrew calls command line applications formula and normal graphical
applications casks. It has the ability to install both styles of applications.
Search Command
The following command is used to search for software packages:
brew search chrome
Open a Homepage
The following command can be used to view the homepage of a formula or cask in your browser:
brew home google-chrome
Update Homebrew
The following command is used to update homebrew:
brew update
Update packages installed on your system
The following command is used to update software that is installed / managed by homebrew.
brew upgrade
You can combine the update and upgrade commands, which will update homebrew and upgrade all the software it manages on you machine with the following command.
brew update && brew upgrade
Conclusion
That is it for this article. I will say that for me, when I find a piece of
software that I want to use, I generally try to search for it in brew first,
before installing it via other means.
I hope you’ve found this article helpful. In the next article we will start to use the skills that we’ve learned in these first two articles and write our first program / script.
