Re:El Capitan and Homebrew
by jrochkind1 on Thursday October 01, 2015 @05:00PM
(#10314674)
Many unix tools are written to build looking for dependencies on default paths including /usr/local.
Putting packages installed in a custom /opt/homebrew location would make it harder to install and use software that often assumes a /usr/local possibility, but not an /opt/homebrew it's never heard of.
It is in fact a pretty common place to put non-distro installed software. And was not (and still is not?) used by OSX out of the box. It made a lot of sense for homebrew to use it.
Putting packages installed in a custom /opt/homebrew location would make it harder to install and use software that often assumes a /usr/local possibility, but not an /opt/homebrew it's never heard of.
It is in fact a pretty common place to put non-distro installed software. And was not (and still is not?) used by OSX out of the box. It made a lot of sense for homebrew to use it.