Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

McBrew VS Homebrew

Compare McBrew VS Homebrew and see what are their differences

This page does not exist

McBrew logo McBrew

A fast GUI for Homebrew written in SwiftUI.

Homebrew logo Homebrew

The missing package manager for macOS
  • McBrew Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-05-04
  • Homebrew Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-29

McBrew features and specs

  • Open Source
    McBrew is hosted on GitHub, making its source code open for public use, inspection, and contribution.
  • Community Involvement
    Being an open-source project, it allows and encourages contributions from developers worldwide, fostering collaboration and innovation.
  • Cost-effective
    McBrew can be used without any licensing fees, reducing overall costs for users who need a solution offered by the project.
  • Customization
    Users can modify the code to fit their needs, adding new features or tweaking existing ones to better suit their use cases.
  • Continuous Updates
    Open-source projects typically receive regular updates and improvements from the community or project maintainers.

Possible disadvantages of McBrew

  • Lack of Official Support
    Being an open-source project, McBrew may lack comprehensive official support or dedicated customer service teams.
  • Varying Quality of Contributions
    Contributions from a wide range of developers might lead to inconsistent code quality and documentation.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    Users might experience compatibility issues with other software or systems as the project evolves over time.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Users may need a deeper understanding of the project's codebase and dependencies to effectively leverage and contribute to it.
  • Security Risks
    Open-source projects could be vulnerable if dependencies or contributions are not adequately vetted for security risks.

Homebrew features and specs

  • User-Friendly
    Homebrew provides an easy-to-use command-line interface that simplifies the installation and management of software packages.
  • Wide Range of Packages
    Homebrew offers a vast repository of software, covering a broad spectrum of utilities, languages, and applications.
  • Dependency Management
    Homebrew automatically handles dependencies, ensuring that all required packages are installed and up to date.
  • Community Support
    Homebrew has a strong community backing and regular contributions, which ensures frequent updates and a robust support system.
  • Cross-Platform
    Homebrew is available on macOS and Linux, allowing for consistent package management across different operating systems.
  • Customizability
    Users can create their own formulae to install software that isn’t available in the core repositories.

Possible disadvantages of Homebrew

  • Resource Intensive
    Some users find that Homebrew can be resource-intensive, particularly during installation of large packages or those with numerous dependencies.
  • Security Risks
    Because Homebrew allows for the installation of third-party software, there is a potential risk of downloading insecure or malicious packages.
  • Complexity for Beginners
    While user-friendly for most, beginners with no command-line experience might find the initial learning curve steep.
  • Duplication
    Users might accidentally install software that is already managed by other package managers or system libraries, leading to duplication.
  • Limited GUI Support
    Homebrew is primarily a command-line tool and lacks a graphical user interface, which could be a drawback for users who prefer GUI-based package management.

Analysis of Homebrew

Overall verdict

  • Homebrew is highly regarded and widely used, especially in the macOS user community. Its ease of use, extensive package library, and active community support make it a reliable and valuable tool for managing software installations.

Why this product is good

  • Homebrew is considered good because it simplifies the management of software on macOS and Linux by allowing users to easily install, update, and manage packages and dependencies. It integrates well with the system, provides a vast library of open-source software, and has a simple command-line interface, making it accessible and efficient for developers and system administrators.

Recommended for

    Homebrew is recommended for developers, system administrators, and power users who require a straightforward and efficient method to manage software packages and dependencies on macOS or Linux.

McBrew videos

Burger Review - Stuey McBrew's

Homebrew videos

Homebrew Review: Coopers Lager - Taste Test

More videos:

  • Review - Homebrew Review | Alchemist Class by Mage Hand Press (featuring Designer Mike Holik)
  • Review - Northern Brewer Cream Ale Homebrew Review Tasting

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to McBrew and Homebrew)
Windows Tools
8 8%
92% 92
Front End Package Manager
Package Manager
7 7%
93% 93
Linux Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using McBrew and Homebrew. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare McBrew and Homebrew

McBrew Reviews

We have no reviews of McBrew yet.
Be the first one to post

Homebrew Reviews

Top Homebrew Alternative: ServBay Becomes the Go-To for Developers
Homebrew is a highly popular package manager on macOS and Linux systems, enabling users to easily install, update, and uninstall command-line tools and applications. Its design philosophy focuses on simplifying the software installation process on macOS, eliminating the need for manual downloads and compilations of software packages.
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Homebrew seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 918 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

McBrew mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of McBrew yet. Tracking of McBrew recommendations started around May 2024.

Homebrew mentions (918)

  • How to for developers: Mastering your corporate MacBook Setup
    Homebrew is the go to for developer using MacOs to be able to install applications. It's the equivalent of Aptitude in Ubuntu. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • Connect to Unsupported Older Linux servers with VS Code Remote-SSH using Custom glibc & libstdc++
    Install glibc and patchelf using brew (Homebrew), or build from source, or use a prebuilt binary (if available). This guide uses brew. Also you can see this. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Dark Souls CRUD Arena - The Prisoner Approach
    In past personal projects, and in my most recent role, I've used Docker for dependency management to avoid the "works on my machine" scenario. I also just like keeping dependencies off my machine, but for this project I opted not to use containers given my lack of dependencies. I used Homebrew for all my needs :). - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Use the Amazon Q Developer CLI on AWS Graviton
    Install Homebrew if it's not already available on your computer. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • 5 Local Environment Mistakes I See Everywhere, and How to Fix Them Properly
    # ./launch.sh: #!/bin/bash if ! Command -v brew &> /dev/null; then echo "❌ Homebrew is not installed. Install it from https://brew.sh/" exit 1 fi if ! Command -v docker &> /dev/null; then echo "⚙️ Installing Docker..." brew install --cask docker fi if ! Command -v php &> /dev/null; then echo "🐘 Installing PHP..." brew install php@8.3 fi. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing McBrew and Homebrew, you can also consider the following products

NixOS - 25 Jun 2014 . All software components in NixOS are installed using the Nix package manager. Packages in Nix are defined using the nix language to create nix expressions.

Chocolatey - The sane way to manage software on Windows.

pacman (package manager) - The pacman package manager is one of the major distinguishing features of ...

iTerm2 - A terminal emulator for macOS that does amazing things.

BrewMate - Homebrew GUI Apps Manager

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft