Getting Started with Homebrew: My Installation Experience

Photo Credit: Homebrew

As a beginner, exploring new concepts in software engineering, I am resilient in advance. And ready to make necessary mistakes so I can learn fast.

My journey with Homebrew began with a simple task: I needed to install Git on Visual Studio Code (VSCode).

In this article, I will walk you through the installation process I went through. I’ll share some insights gained too.

What is Homebrew?

Homebrew is a tool that simplifies the installation of software on your MacOS.

Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple (or your Linux system) didn’t.

Think of Homebrew as a substitute for your App Store. The cool part is that you don’t need to ‘Drag this icon into the Applications folder’.

How to Install Homebrew

I visited the Homebrew website. And the installation process kicked off with a simple one-liner in my terminal:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/
HEAD/install.sh)"

Response from the Terminal

I was not sure what to do when I saw the message “The default interactive shell is now zsh”. So, I asked ChatGPT, and it said for me to do nothing.

Curious about what “Sudo Access” means. I asked too. Sudo stands for “Superuser do”. It is a command that authorizes users without giving them permanent superuser privileges [Sudo Access is different from Role-Based Access Control].

Let’s proceed to the actual process!

Step 1: Press Return/Enter

I pressed the Enter button to proceed and waited for the download of the Command Line Tools for Xcode.

After waiting for about 4 minutes for further steps, and nothing. I assumed something was wrong.

I copied the lines from the terminal and pasted them into ChatGPT with the question, “What’s wrong here?”.

Response: During this process, the system is trying to download and install these tools. It might take a while depending on your internet connection speed and the size of the Command Line Tools package.

Step 2: Enter your Mac Password

The download of the Command Line Tools took 6 minutes or so. I was then prompted to enter my password. I typed the first 2 characters of my Mac password, but there was no sign that I was typing.

Wondering what was wrong, I started to type around my keyboard and press enter.

Confused, I got back to ChatGPT with the question “It’s done downloading and is asking for my password. But it’s not allowing me to type. what do I do?”

Response: It’s possible that the password field doesn’t display your input as you type for security reasons. Even if you don’t see the characters as you type, your keystrokes are still being recorded. Carefully type your password and press “Enter” when you’re done.

Step 3: Press Return/Enter again

I followed the steps from ChatGPT exactly, and it worked. I was then prompted to press Enter. Some lines with percentages kept running up to 100%. Then I got the next prompt.

Step 4: Add Homebrew to your Path

I ran 2 commands to add Homebrew to my system’s path, but I got no feedback. Unsure if the commands ran, I was back to ChatGPT, “I ran the commands, but it seemed like nothing happened. What now?”.

Response: It appears that the commands to add Homebrew to your PATH and run Homebrew’s shellenv are executed without any error messages. However, it's possible that you might not see any immediate output or confirmation.

To ensure that Homebrew is correctly set up in your PATH, you can verify it by running the following command:

brew --version

Step 5: Confirm Successful Download of Homebrew

I ran the ‘Brew Version’ command to confirm that I have Homebrew available in my internal.

Finally, my AHA moment! Homebrew is successfully installed.

In Summary,

We've run through my Homebrew installation experience. I had the password challenge and uncertainty about the installation status.

Also, I leveraged ChatGPT to understand the challenges I faced and solve them. Take note that I always copied lines from the terminal and pasted them in ChatGPT, to give enough context.

Thank you for reading this far. I look forward to solving more challenging problems and writing about them. Happy Brewing!