Hi,
On 06/02/14 18:14, Greg Stark wrote:
> Installing into /usr/local is a global system change. Only root should
> be able to do that and any user that can do that can easily acquire
> root privileges.
The idea behind Homebrew is copied from FreeBSD, where you also
install 3rd party software to /usr/local. This is felt as cleaner and
nicer by these guys. Homebrew goes one step further: with Homebrew you
are able to completely remove all 3rd party software installed via
Homebrew as well as Homebrew itself by simply removing /usr/local.
And since most of the time OS X is used as a desktop software, they
simplified things for users by chown-ing /usr/local (which, in a clean
OS X installation, is either empty or does not exist, depending on the
version) at installation time to the user installing Homebrew.
Of course you can avoid this by installing Homebrew as root, but using
the root user is not very popular in OS X land.
Best regards,
-- Christian Kruse http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services