Homebrew Management

If you're a person who struggles to keep tabs on all the installed formulae or apps using Homebrew, then cutler could be a great choice for you! Make sure your Homebrew installation is accessible from the $PATH variable, and then you can back up the necessary formula/cask names into the config file you previously wrote, using this command:

$ cutler brew backup

# or, only backup the ones which are not a dependency:
$ cutler brew backup --no-deps

This eliminates the usage of the notorious brew bundle command which creates a separate Bundlefile for you to track. Why do so much when all you need is just one, central file?

Now, when you want to install from the file, simply run:

$ cutler brew install

You can also invoke the command's functionalty from within cutler apply:

$ cutler apply --with-brew

This will install every formula/cask alongside applying preferences and running external commands.

The structure of the brew table inside cutler's configuration is like such:

[brew]
taps = ["hitblast/tap"]
casks = ["zed", "zulu@21", "android-studio"]
formulae = ["rust", "python3"]

# Ensure dependencies aren't accounted for.
# This is auto-set if --no-deps is used in `brew backup`.
no-deps = true

While running this command, cutler will also notify you about any extra software which is untracked by it. Then, you can run cutler brew backup again to sync.

Backend Prerequisites

Obviously, running Homebrew on a Mac requires the Xcode Command-Line Tools to be installed, let it be through Xcode itself or through the preincluded utility in macOS. By default, cutler will try to ensure that it is there, before executing any of the subprocesses.

If you want to manually install it, you can do so by running:

$ xcode-select --install