July 27th, 2024

Workbrew

Workbrew is a management tool for organizations using Homebrew, offering features for monitoring macOS devices, enhancing security, and streamlining onboarding. It supports remote control and compliance, available via subscription.

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Workbrew

Workbrew is a management tool designed for organizations using Homebrew, enabling them to monitor and configure macOS devices efficiently. It includes features such as the Workbrew Console for overseeing Homebrew installations, the Workbrew Agent for enhanced security, and an offline installer for initial setup. With over 35 million users, Homebrew allows quick installation of packages across macOS, Linux, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Workbrew aims to streamline the onboarding process for engineers, improve security by running Homebrew as a dedicated user, and ensure consistent usage across teams. It offers remote control of Homebrew installations, mass reporting, and compliance with security standards, potentially reducing cloud service costs by utilizing existing hardware. The platform is supported by a team of experienced professionals from GitHub and Homebrew, providing responsive support to early users. Workbrew is available for a subscription fee, with pricing options for both individual and enterprise use. The team behind Workbrew includes notable figures such as COO Vanessa Gennarelli, CEO John Britton, and CTO Mike McQuaid, all of whom have extensive backgrounds in developer support and education. Workbrew is currently seeking initial users to help refine the product and address deployment challenges related to Homebrew in corporate environments.

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By @ComputerGuru - 6 months
MacPorts is strictly superior to HomeBrew and does not take the same eff you stance towards its users that HB has in the past.
By @vslira - 6 months
As a user of Homebrew I'm glad and rooting for the team to find financial sustainability for such an important piece of software.
By @DamonHD - 6 months
A smart idea. I just bumped up my Patreon monthly for Homebrew to add some power to their elbow!
By @awinter-py - 6 months
homebrew the package manager that is literally built on git yet still doesn't have version pinning or versioning for most packages so that you have to host your own copies of public packages to use the old one?

or a different homebrew

By @cedws - 6 months
I was going to ask what happened to that new package manager they were working on but apparently it’s dead.

(Tea, later renamed to pkgx)

https://github.com/pkgxdev/pkgx

By @dmattia - 6 months
I used to like using homebrew on personal machines. But then as the person in charge of the dev environments at my company, I tried using homebrew packages for our devs but it just went horribly because homebrew don't have old versions.

- Different folks ran `brew install <foo>` at a different time? They may see different behavior

- I ran `brew install <foo>` after a coworker did? I may not be able to replicate whatever issues they are facing

- Someone new ran `brew install <foo>` on their new laptop? They may have an entirely separate major version of that library with breaking changes.

- Do I know if folks are using vulnerable, old packages? Nope!

- Does production use some database with version X, but homebrew only supports a client for version Y? Eh whatever, just have folks locally use version Y. What could possibly go wrong with using a different version locally vs in production.

I kept our own homebrew tap for a while and pinned versions. That was fine. But then I had to maintain that tap, and there wasn't any easy way I found for checking if the versions we kept in that tap had any vulnerabilities on any registry I could find.

Then I found Github Codespaces / devcontainers, switched everyone to use Linux inside Docker, used linux package managers to install pinned versions of everything we needed (using the same exact packages as we bundle into production), and scan my containers using a container vulnerability scanner nightly.

Instantly, 10+ hours of work per week for me vanished and I can now at least reproduce problems and fix them for everyone when they come up.

By @bankcust08385 - 6 months
"HB is terrible. We use Chef with microdnf and Munki/MSC instead." - Head of a client platform engineering team at a MAANG
By @thebiglebrewski - 6 months
Awesome idea, go team Homebrew!