Homebrew El Capitan

  • I'm stuck to reinstall brew, ruby on El Capitan. Actually I didn't remember how exactly it occurs, but I lost my brew and I don't get reinstall it. This is the message I receive when I try to.
  • Try running the following so you can see the download progress: ctrl + c to exit the hanging upgrade. Run brew doctor. It prompted me to. Run brew cleanup to clean up false symlinks. To install xcode CLT via the command sudo xcode-select -install. Finally brew update worked.
  • It is possible you are getting the command wrong too, but it is possible Homebrew is not compatible with your MacOS version though I don’t think that is as likely. I have Homebrew working fine for me on my Macs with various system software releases, like Mojave, Sierra, El Capitan, Mavericks, etc.
Homebrew El Capitan

Apple released yesterday, September 30th, the new version of OS X called El Capitan. I upgraded today my both machines (iMac and MacBook Pro), and there is one issue with Homebrew, when it is installed on default location on /usr/local.

Oct 22, 2015 推奨方法：El Capitanへアップグレードする前にHomebrewを入れてしまう. If you don't already have homebrew installed, do that first, so you don't have to deal with SIP issues. Post Upgrade to El Capitan, with Homebrew & Ruby.md.

This is caused by a change in Apple's security features, called System Integrity Protection, or SIP for short. Basically SIP prevents you from writing to various system locations (e.g. /usr/local), even if you are root.

There is a workaround in Homebrew's docs, but I suggest not to run it as it is said there. This is because there may be some other files for non-Homebrew installed software, like something for F-Secure, and I really don't want to change the ownership of those files and directories.

Instead I did the following:

Homebrew

Homebrew El Capitan Download

  1. To see, if I was affected by this issue in the first place, I ran the command brew doctor which basically told, that yes, I was affected.
  2. As a next step, I changed the ownership of the directory /usr/local by running sudo chown $(whoami):admin /usr/local. Note! Not recursively with switch -R.
  3. Then I rerun brew doctor. In case of my elderly iMac, all was clear, and Homebrew was up and running again.
  4. In case of my MacBook Pro, I needed to run the same for directory /usr/local/share/man/man8 with sudo chown $(whoami):admin /usr/local/share/man/man8. After this, brew doctor gave all clear, and I was able to run Homebrew again.
Homebrew

By the way, this is probably necessary to do after every single OS X update in the future, see Apple's dev docs for more.1

Homebrew El Capitan Free

Why /usr/local in the first place? Since it is the default location for Homebrew, and I did not know better several years ago. Read more from Hacker News.

Hope this helps, happy brewing!

Homebrew mac os el capitanHomebrew

Homebrew Mac Os El Capitan

  1. Update after the release of 10.11.1 on October 21st 2015: The update process did not change the directory permissions or ownership on /usr/local. Phew.

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