"brew leaves" and "brew deps" seem to disagree #2759

candlerb · 2022-01-10T11:33:14Z

candlerb
Jan 10, 2022

I have a question about brew leaves.

I thought that brew leaves would show all packages which are not dependencies of another package - in other words, "top level" packages that can be safely removed.

However, I find that there are other packages which are reported by "brew deps" as not being dependencies of other packages, but not listed by "brew leaves" either. Here's an example:

$ brew list | grep assimp
assimp
$ brew leaves | grep assimp
$ brew leaves -r | grep assimp
$ brew leaves -p | grep assimp
$ brew deps --installed | grep assimp
assimp:
$

So it's unclear to me whether I can safely remove assimp or not. And if I can, why was it not listed by brew leaves?

I don't ever remember installing "assimp" so it was presumably installed as a dependency of some other package which has since been uninstalled. I only happened to notice this because brew outdated tells me it wants to update it. I'd rather uninstall it if it's not in use.

Previously I'd been tidying up by uninstalling everything listed by brew leaves -p, repeating until empty, which it is now:

$ brew leaves -p | wc -l
       0
$

FYI, brew update is fully up-to-date. brew doctor gives nothing relevant:

$ brew doctor
Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

Warning: You have unlinked kegs in your Cellar.
Leaving kegs unlinked can lead to build-trouble and cause formulae that depend on
those kegs to fail to run properly once built. Run `brew link` on these:
  six
$

Host is Macbook Pro 13" 2015, Monterey 12.1

$ uname -a
Darwin MacBook-Pro-4.local 21.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 21.2.0: Sun Nov 28 20:28:54 PST 2021; root:xnu-8019.61.5~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Thanks!

Answered by candlerb

Jan 10, 2022

Ah, I just discovered this:

$ brew uses --installed assimp
poppler                                                             qt
$

I find that brew leaves does show "poppler", but not "qt".

Also:

$ brew deps --installed --tree
...
assimp
...

poppler
└── qt
    ├── assimp
...

qt
├── assimp
...

That's pretty clear. What's confusing me then is that brew deps --installed (without --tree) doesn't show assimp as a dependency of anything, and especially not qt.

$ brew deps --installed | grep assimp
assimp:
$ brew deps --installed | grep ^qt:
qt: brotli ca-certificates dbus double-conversion freetype gdbm gettext giflib glib hunspell icu4c jasper jpeg libb2 libffi libpng libtiff md4c mpdeci…

View full answer

carlocab · 2022-01-10T11:44:36Z

carlocab
Jan 10, 2022
Collaborator

What's the output of brew uses --installed assimp and brew autoremove --dry-run?

0 replies

candlerb · 2022-01-10T11:44:45Z

candlerb
Jan 10, 2022
Author

Ah, I just discovered this:

$ brew uses --installed assimp
poppler                                                             qt
$

I find that brew leaves does show "poppler", but not "qt".

Also:

$ brew deps --installed --tree
...
assimp
...

poppler
└── qt
    ├── assimp
...

qt
├── assimp
...

That's pretty clear. What's confusing me then is that brew deps --installed (without --tree) doesn't show assimp as a dependency of anything, and especially not qt.

$ brew deps --installed | grep assimp
assimp:
$ brew deps --installed | grep ^qt:
qt: brotli ca-certificates dbus double-conversion freetype gdbm gettext giflib glib hunspell icu4c jasper jpeg libb2 libffi libpng libtiff md4c mpdecimal [email protected] pcre pcre2 [email protected] readline webp xz zstd
$ brew deps --installed qt
brotli
ca-certificates
dbus
double-conversion
freetype
gdbm
gettext
giflib
glib
hunspell
icu4c
jasper
jpeg
libb2
libffi
libpng
libtiff
md4c
mpdecimal
[email protected]
pcre
pcre2
[email protected]
readline
webp
xz
zstd
$

7 replies

candlerb Jan 10, 2022
Author

Something else that might be related:

$ brew outdated
assimp (5.1.5) < 5.1.6
sqlite (3.37.1) < 3.37.2
mpv (0.34.0) != 0.34.1
$

carlocab Jan 10, 2022
Collaborator

Yea, that's definitely related. I'm pretty sure these discrepancies will go away when you do brew upgrade.

candlerb Jan 10, 2022
Author

Hmm. Does this mean: "brew deps --installed foo shows the dependencies of foo, but excluding those dependencies whose installed version doesn't match the latest available version" ??

If so, I wasn't expecting that.

carlocab Jan 10, 2022
Collaborator

It's a bit unexpected, but it's a key part of dependency resolution (which does often have a lot of unexpected consequences).

The idea here is that you want brew install foo to make sure that all of its dependencies are also up-to-date, since we don't know if foo works with older versions of the dependencies. This means that brew considers having an old version of a dependency installed as not satisfying foo's dependencies. The benefit of this is that brew install foo also upgrades and outdated but installed dependencies.

You can also see this by doing brew info qt (assuming you haven't yet upgraded sqlite and assimp). You'll see ✘s next to sqlite and assimp since those dependencies are currently not satisfied.

candlerb Jan 10, 2022
Author

You can also see this by doing brew info qt (assuming you haven't yet upgraded sqlite and assimp). You'll see ✘s next to sqlite and assimp since those dependencies are currently not satisfied.

I do indeed, and thanks for your explanation:

$ brew info qt
qt: stable 6.2.2 (bottled), HEAD
Cross-platform application and UI framework
https://www.qt.io/
/usr/local/Cellar/qt/6.2.2 (12,156 files, 509.3MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2022-01-08 at 13:29:30
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/qt.rb
License: GFDL-1.3-only and GPL-2.0-only and GPL-3.0-only and LGPL-2.1-only and LGPL-3.0-only
==> Dependencies
Build: cmake ✘, ninja ✘, node ✔, pkg-config ✔
Required: assimp ✘, brotli ✔, dbus ✔, double-conversion ✔, freetype ✔, glib ✔, hunspell ✔, icu4c ✔, jasper ✔, jpeg ✔, libb2 ✔, libpng ✔, libtiff ✔, md4c ✔, pcre2 ✔, [email protected] ✔, sqlite ✘, webp ✔, zstd ✔
==> Requirements
Build: Xcode ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
	Install HEAD version
==> Analytics
install: 44,846 (30 days), 191,813 (90 days), 712,139 (365 days)
install-on-request: 22,886 (30 days), 94,684 (90 days), 267,760 (365 days)
build-error: 76 (30 days)

gromgit · 2022-01-10T12:24:13Z

gromgit
Jan 10, 2022

Weird. What's the output of brew config?

1 reply

candlerb Jan 10, 2022
Author

Weird. What's the output of brew config?

$ brew config
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 3.3.9
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 96137bc19e68398ebbb7033379df288cd8b9a3f9
Last commit: 3 weeks ago
Core tap ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core
Core tap HEAD: f9fa359703cc9534e2582a4da7f32084c6b803b0
Core tap last commit: 6 hours ago
Core tap branch: master
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_CORE_GIT_REMOTE: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core
HOMEBREW_DISPLAY: /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.vL4B8EjlIf/org.xquartz:0
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 4
Homebrew Ruby: 2.6.8 => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/bin/ruby
CPU: quad-core 64-bit broadwell
Clang: 13.0.0 build 1300
Git: 2.32.0 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 7.77.0 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 12.1-x86_64
CLT: 13.2.0.0.1.1638488800
Xcode: 13.2.1
$

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"brew leaves" and "brew deps" seem to disagree #2759

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