Using `brew bundle` effectively

[sanman1k98]

Homebrew has official support for an external command: bundle. It can be used to write all installed casks, formulae, taps, fonts, etc into a Brewfile. That file can then be read from to install a bunch of programs. I use it so I can quickly install a bunch of apps and CLI programs that I use all the time like nvim or my terminal emulator of choice, kitty.

To output all your installed dependencies to a file

Run brew bundle dump to write a Brewfile in your current directory.

• --force to overwrite an existing Brewfile
• --describe will add a comment above each line unless the dependency does not have a description
• to change where you want to write the file to, you can:
  • --file=/path/to/Brewfile to specify the path location
  • --global will use ~/.Brewfile
  • setting the HOMEBREW_BUNDLE_FILE environment variable to specify the location

To install the dependencies from that file

Run brew bundle install to read the dependancies from the Brewfile in your current directory and install and upgrade them. If all dependencies are installed successfully, it will output a Brewfile.lock.json in the same directory as the Brewfile

• will read from the HOMEBREW_BUNDLE_FILE if you have it set
• passing --file with a path will change the location to wherever you specify
• passing --global will read from ~/.Brewfile
• passing --no-lock will not output a Brewfile.lock.json
  • can also set the HOMEBREW_BUNDLE_NO_LOCK environment variable to opt-out of writing a Brewfile.lock.json

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Some Ideas or TODOs

• set the HOMEBREW_BUNDLE_FILE variable in .zshenv be ~/.config/brew/ or something like that
• investigate the Brewfile.lock.json and see if I really need it
• add brew bundle install to the amazing install script that I'm gonna figure out how to write someday

[sanman1k98]

Need to investigate: using multiple Brewfiles.

[sanman1k98]

By default, brew list will output all installed formulae and casks regardless of whether they were installed only as a dependency of another formula. To list out formulae that were installed manually, use brew leaves -r or brew leaves --installed-on-request.