Re:Minimal safe Bash script template
by eropple on Tuesday December 15, 2020 @07:02PM
(#25437179)
What you describe is 100% real and is why `brew install coreutils findutils gnu-sed` has always been a prerequisite for any developer whose dev environment I've been tasked with supporting.
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That’s definitely one solution and I have resorted to it from time to time, but it’s far from perfect - now anything that detects macOS and uses different options is broken.
So what you can do, though, is not link them in and your scripts can use their Homebrew directory to get ahold of the GNU binaries. It is still a script change you have to make, but it's one you can make at a top level and then your bash wranglers are very unlikely to break them.
(Though I use those as daily-driver packages on Macs and have actually never had something break? GNU tools tend to support BSD options.)
Maybe this is easier with the way homebrew does things (I prefer MacPorts) but then you have to manage a bunch of symlinks to bring in the stuff you DO want to use by default.
I actually hadn't thought to try this approach, though. The next time this happens I will definitely give it a shot.