Category: technical writing

Homebrew is a command line utility that makes installing software easier because it does a good job of installing any dependencies for you. Unfortunately, users sometimes run into trouble while installing Homebrew. Here, I show you how to perform the “default” installation that Homebrew recommends on the home page of its website.

Open Terminal and confirm that Homebrew is not installed by running the brew --version command. If it isn’t installed, the output returns Command 'brew' not found. For example.

username@laptop:~$ brew --version

Command 'brew' not found.

Visit the Homebrew website, https://brew.sh/, and copy the installation command by clicking the copy icon:

In Terminal, paste the command by pressing the Ctrl+Shift+V keys at the same time. Then, press Enter to run the command.

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

You must install Git before installing Homebrew. See:
  https://docs.brew.sh/Installation

username@laptop:~$ git

Command 'git' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install git

If your system doesn’t have git, the output prompts you to install it. So you do that.

$ sudo apt install git
[sudo] password for username:        
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
[...]
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) ...

Note: Whenever prompted, enter y to continue the installation process.

Note: I use [...] to indicate that I’ve omitted many lines of output.

Rerun the command that installs Homebrew. You can get the command back by pressing the up arrow key a couple of times until the command reappears.

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

This automated installation process can take several minutes. When it finishes, the installer suggests “next steps” for you to complete the installation:

[...]
==> Next steps:
- Run these two commands in your terminal to add Homebrew to your PATH:
    echo 'eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> /home/<username>/.profile
    eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"
- Install Homebrew's dependencies if you have sudo access:
    sudo apt-get install build-essential
  For more information, see:
    https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux
- We recommend that you install GCC:
    brew install gcc
- Run brew help to get started
- Further documentation:
    https://docs.brew.sh

Copy/paste these next steps to a file in a text editor so that you can paste and run the commands one at a time.

As noted in the “Next steps,” add Homebrew to your PATH:

$ echo 'eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> /home/<username>/.profile

$ eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

As noted in the “Next steps,” if you have sudo access, install Homebrew’s dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
[sudo] password for <username>:        
Reading package lists... Done
[...]

Reload your terminal by closing and reopening the Terminal or by entering:

$ bash --login.

As noted in the “Next steps,” install the gcc compiler, which brew often uses:

$ brew install gcc
[...]

If the preceding brew command produces a Command 'brew' not found message, reboot your Linux system and try it again.

Congratulations! Using brew to install gcc or any other software verifies that brew is correctly installed and works!