Homebrew

Homebrew calls itself The missing package manager for macOS and is an essential tool for any developer.

Installation

Before you can run Homebrew you need to have the Command Line Tools for Xcode installed. It include compilers and other tools that will allow you to build things from source, and if you are missing this it's available through the App Store > Updates. You can also install it from the terminal by running the following:

sudo xcode-select --install

To install Homebrew run the following in a terminal:

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

hit Enter, and follow the steps on the screen.

Setting up your PATH

To make the Homebrew-installed programs available in your shell, you need to add your Homebrew installation location to your $PATH. This is done for you already on macOS 10.14 Mojave and newer. For older versions of macOS, do the following:

You change your path by adding /usr/local/bin to your PATH environment variable. This can be done on a per-user basis by adjusting PATH in your ~/.bash_profile. To do this, run:

echo 'PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

(If you're using zsh, you should do this for ~/.zshrc in addition to ~/.bash_profile.)

Alternatively, you can also insert /usr/local/bin before the first line of /etc/paths to change the global default paths order, for all users and all major shells. An admin password will be required if you modify the file.

Then, to be able to use brew you need to start a new terminal session. After that you should make sure everything is working by running:

brew doctor

If everything is good, you should see no warnings, and a message that you are "ready to brew!".