Linuxbrew

Linuxbrew is a fork of Homebrew, the macOS package manager, for Linux.

It can be installed in your home directory and does not require root access. The same package manager can be used on both your Linux server and your Mac laptop. Installing a modern version of glibc and gcc in your home directory on an old distribution of Linux takes five minutes.

Features, usage and installation instructions are summarised on the homepage. Terminology (e.g. the difference between a Cellar, Tap, Cask and so forth) is explained here.

To receive updates of major changes to Linuxbrew subscribe to the Linuxbrew Updates issue on GitHub.

Install Linuxbrew

The installation script installs Linuxbrew to /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew if possible and in your home directory at ~/.linuxbrew otherwise.

Paste at a Terminal prompt:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Linuxbrew/install/master/install)"

Follow the Next steps instructions to add Linuxbrew to your PATH and to your bash shell profile script, either ~/.profile on Debian/Ubuntu or ~/.bash_profile on CentOS/Fedora/RedHat.

test -d ~/.linuxbrew && PATH="$HOME/.linuxbrew/bin:$HOME/.linuxbrew/sbin:$PATH"
test -d /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew && PATH="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/sbin:$PATH"
test -r ~/.bash_profile && echo 'export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/bin:$(brew --prefix)/sbin:$PATH"' >>~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/bin:$(brew --prefix)/sbin:$PATH"' >>~/.profile

You're done! Try installing a package:

brew install hello

If you're using an older distribution of Linux, installing your first package will also install a recent version of gcc.

Use brew doctor to troubleshoot common issues.

Features

Can install software to a home directory and so does not require sudo
Install software not packaged by the native distribution
Install up-to-date versions of software when the native distribution is old
Use the same package manager to manage both your Mac and Linux machines

Dependencies

GCC 4.4 or newer
Linux 2.6.16 or newer
64-bit x86 or 32-bit ARM (Raspberry Pi)

Paste at a Terminal prompt:

Debian or Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential curl file git python-setuptools ruby

Fedora, CentOS or Red Hat

sudo yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' && sudo yum install curl file git irb python-setuptools ruby

32-bit x86 platforms

Linuxbrew does not currently support 32-bit x86 platforms. It would be possible for Linuxbrew to work on 32-bit x86 platforms with some effort. Pull requests would be welcome if someone were to volunteer to maintain the 32-bit x86 support.

Bottles

Bottles are Linuxbrew's precompiled binary packages. Linuxbrew bottles work on any Linux system. They do however require glibc 2.19 or better. On systems with an older version of glibc, Linuxbrew will install glibc the first time that you install a bottled formula. If you prefer to use the glibc provided by your system and build all formulas from source, add to your .bashrc or .zshrc:

export HOMEBREW_BUILD_FROM_SOURCE=1

Alternative Installation

Extract (or git clone) Linuxbrew wherever you want. Use /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew if possible.

git clone https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew.git ~/.linuxbrew

PATH="$HOME/.linuxbrew/bin:$PATH"
export MANPATH="$(brew --prefix)/share/man:$MANPATH"
export INFOPATH="$(brew --prefix)/share/info:$INFOPATH"

What Packages Are Available?

Type brew search for a list.
Or use brew search --desc <keyword> to browse packages from the command line.

Troubleshooting

First, please run brew update and brew doctor.

Second, read the Troubleshooting Checklist.

If you don't read these it will take us far longer to help you with your problem.

Something broke!

If a Linuxbrew formula doesn't work, open an issue on GitHub or, even better, submit a pull request.

Contributing

We'd love you to contribute to Linuxbrew. First, please read our Contribution Guide and Code of Conduct. Please see our guidelines on whether to send pull requests to Linuxbrew or Homebrew.

We explicitly welcome contributions from people who have never contributed to open-source before: we were all beginners once! We can help build on a partially working pull request with the aim of getting it merged. We are also actively seeking to diversify our contributors and especially welcome contributions from women from all backgrounds and people of colour.

Who Are You?

Linuxbrew is maintained by Shaun Jackman, Bob W. Hogg, Piotr Gaczkowski, Maxim Belkin, Jonathan Chang, Michka Popoff, and Alyssa Ross.

Linuxbrew Community

@Linuxbrew (Twitter)

License

Code is under the BSD 2-clause "Simplified" License. Documentation is under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Donate

Linuxbrew is a non-profit project run entirely by unpaid volunteers. We need your funds to pay for continuous integration and the computer resources used to build precompiled binary bottles of your favourite formulae. Every donation will be spent on making Linuxbrew better for our users. Please consider donating regularly to Linuxbrew through Patreon. We appreciate your support and contribution, no matter the level.

Linuxbrew is a fork of Homebrew, the macOS package manager, for Linux. Please consider donating to Homebrew on Patreon as well if you use Homebrew on macOS.

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