/opt/homebrew isn't a folder provided by the operating the system, but it's still a "system folder" as in not a user folder. That's messed up. I have to imagine that this causes no end of issues on multi-user machines. The homebrew folder should either be somewhere under ~, or owned by root or some other system account.

Most macOS developer machines (our primary/biggest target audience) are not multi-user machines. It's not owned by root because Homebrew doesn't run as root (because the macOS sandbox doesn't run as root).

Nothing stopping you from having this owned by a system account, it's just not a path we recommend because it's not the best fit for most of our users.

Most compiled software gets its installation prefix hardcoded at build time. If you move the directory elsewhere, then everything needs to be recompiled.

I remember having one user account for my personal stuff and another user account for work on a personal machine (startup life) and needing to chown brew's install folders whenever I switched users. Extremely annoying.

> you shouldn’t install outside the default, supported, best prefix

So you can, but apparently you shouldn't.

The problem is binary artifacts of compiled software. Those native binaries have hardcoded paths to dependencies and so by changing the location, you're forcing homebrew to compile everything locally to use a different path. It's the same reason Nix is still at /nix, despite the quirky installation requirements it forces on modern Macs with SIP.

There are tools to rewrite links in binaries, but they only work until you get a program calling dlopen or equivalent

I was simply responding to the statement

> its possible to choose a custom installation location, even on Intel Macs if you prefer.

Whilst it is physically possible, it won't work.

What would be better is a plan. Putting it in a different system folder like `opt` isn't much better.

It does work, it's just not supported because the experience is worse. Open source (Homebrew included) is full of lots of plans: it's lacking people willing and able to execute on those plans. When or if that happens: Homebrew will support installations in more locations.

How is the experience worse if it works?

The other explanations imply that it may not work due to hard coded paths.

Because of the hardcoded paths, the precompiled artifacts will not work. Because of this, homebrew will need to run the build script locally. This means that the process takes longer, which is what makes the experience worse.

/usr/local/bin still wants chowned on Intel Macs but we’re looking at ways of being more liberal there too.

Nice. What about the default telemetry?

The default telemetry is: - (still) not sent until we notify you that it's opt-out - moved (this year) from Google Analytics to our InfluxDB instance (destroying all existing GA data) - only kept for 365 days - contains no PII - no longer even attempts to identify individual users - necessary to be opt-in in order for us to be able to effectively run the project

Imagine if you entered a party that had a big sign that says you consent to be groped by entering the venue.

"But we notified you!"

Consent does not work that way.

It keeps being pointed out that this is a nonprofit run by volunteers - this simply underscores your utter lack of a legitimate business use case for spying on your users.

The only reason people insist on opt-out (ie nonconsensual) telemetry is because they know they don't actually have consent and their ingest data would drop like a rock if they had to, you know, check with their users for consent before uploading their usage. It's the old "she never said stop!" dodge.

Consent matters.

Ah sneak, posting about analytics in every Homebrew thread. I thought you might like that we moved to InfluxDB but: no.

A new low for you by literally comparing an open source project gathering analytics to sexual assault and rape this time.

Rather than ad hominem, perhaps you could address the fundamental consent issue?

It doesn't matter how you store the data obtained without consent.

What you are doing is fundamentally unethical, and you only get away with it because most of your users are unaware that you are doing it.

I post about it because your users deserve to know what you are silently using their computer to do each time they install a package. You have fooled them (and yourself) with this distraction about a "notice".

Colorful imagery aside, this kind of response is a "new low" unfortunately.

It's still opt-out, but they moved from Google Analytics to their own self-hosted InfluxDB for increased privacy.