brew bundle add && brew bundle remove

[johndbritton]

I'm interested in implementing brew bundle add <formula> and brew bundle remove <formula> commands in homebrew-bundle. These commands would add or remove formulae from the brewfile at ~/.Brewfile.

Is this a contribution you'd consider accepting and if so do you any implementation suggestions or requirements to have it merged?

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In Homebrew/discussions#163 I asked:

I have a global ~/.Brewfile that I use to manage everything installed on my Mac.

Whenever I install something new, it usually goes something like this:

1. Find an app I want to install
2. brew search name
3. brew install name
4. edit ~/.Brewfile to add the app

Is there a way to do this in one step, something like brew install name --save or brew bundle add name? I've searched around but haven't found anything that does what I'm looking for. If it doesn't exist, where would be the best place to send a PR brew or homebrew-bundle? Is this something that you'd accept a pull request for?

It was suggested that a feature like this would be most appropriate in homebrow-bundle:

This would belong in the Homebrew/homebrew-bundle repo.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Adding and removing feels like a step below what you want, right? Presumably you want a way of keeping your (--global?) Brewfile in sync with your installations. How about if there was something like brew bundle install wget --global --dump or something similar that ran brew install for you and, if it passed, redumped the global Brewfile automatically?

[johndbritton]

I do want to modify my global Brewfile. In the linked discussion they said that it wasn't likely to get accepted as a change to install but I would prefer it as part of install rather than a separate command. Ideally it would be an argument or a config setting for the default install behavior.

I'm less keen on doing a dump every time as I don't necessarily want every package that is installed on a given machine added to my global Brewfile. I use the Brewfile in my dotfiles on multiple machines and sometimes I install things to try them out before I want to commit to keeping them as part of my core setup.

[MikeMcQuaid]

I do want to modify my global Brewfile. In the linked discussion they said that it wasn't likely to get accepted as a change to install but I would prefer it as part of install rather than a separate command. Ideally it would be an argument or a config setting for the default install behavior.

I'm thinking it would be brew bundle install rather than brew install.

I use the Brewfile in my dotfiles on multiple machines and sometimes I install things to try them out before I want to commit to keeping them as part of my core setup.

Hmm, so a selective dump is desired, effectively?

[johndbritton]

I'm thinking it would be brew bundle install rather than brew install.

I actually like that better. Then no flag is needed, brew install installs. brew bundle install installs and adds to your Brewfile.

Hmm, so a selective dump is desired, effectively?

Yeah. The delta of packages that were added in the brew bundle install command.

[johndbritton]

So a question about this. How would brew bundle install behave as compared to brew bundle install --global?

My thought is that brew bundle install would install the formula and add to the project Brewfile whereas brew bundle install --global would install the formula and add to the ~/.Brewfile.

[MikeMcQuaid]

My thought is that brew bundle install would install the formula and add to the project Brewfile whereas brew bundle install --global would install the formula and add to the ~/.Brewfile.

Yes, that makes sense.

Annoyingly this probably needs a new name like brew bundle install-and-add or brew bundle --add or something less cumbersome as brew bundle install is already taken.

[Rylan12]

Another option might be to have brew bundle add and brew bundle remove simply add or remove the provided formula/cask/tap to the brewfile. Adding the --install or --uninstall flag would also run brew install or brew uninstall on the formula.

So, brew bundle add git will add the git formula to your brewfile but won't necessarily install it. brew bundle add --install git would add git to the brewfile and install the formula. Same with brew bundle remove git and brew bundle remove --uninstall git.

That might be too cumbersome to type, so you could invert it by having brew bundle add git install and add whereas brew bundle add --no-install git just adds.

[MikeMcQuaid]

So, brew bundle add git will add the git formula to your brewfile but won't necessarily install it. brew bundle add --install git would add git to the brewfile and install the formula. Same with brew bundle remove git and brew bundle remove --uninstall git.

Makes sense to me 👍🏻

[johndbritton]

I like that too. I'll give the implementation a go, any pointers or non-obvious requirements?

[Rylan12]

Thanks, @johndbritton! As always, feel free to open a PR if you're stuck and need some guidance!

[primeapple]

Hi guys, what happened to the PR for this?

[MikeMcQuaid]

@primeapple it went stale.