6 Must-know commands for cleaning up Homebrew packages

I recently discovered "zerobrew" and decided to switch over from Homebrew. To prepare for the transition, I've been cleaning up my Homebrew packages using these commands. Since zerobrew doesn't support every package available on Homebrew yet (for example, "Codex"), I'm currently running both side-by-side. zb install codex ==> Installing codex...

Note: This package can't be installed with zerobrew. Error: missing formula 'codex'

Try installing with Homebrew instead: brew install codex

error: missing formula 'codex' Execution time: 0.94s

/ zerobrew

zerobrew

zerobrew brings uv-style architecture to Homebrew packages on macOS and Linux. Install curl -fsSL https://zerobrew.rs/install | bash After install, run the export command it prints (or restart your terminal). Quick start zb install jq # install one package zb install wget git # install multiple zb bundle # install from Brewfile zb bundle install -f myfile # install from custom file zb bundle dump # export installed packages to Brewfile zb bundle dump -f out --force # dump to custom file (overwrite) zb uninstall jq # uninstall one package zb reset # uninstall everything zb gc # garbage collect unused store entries zbx jq --version # run without linking Performance snapshot

Package Homebrew ZB (cold) ZB (warm) Cold Speedup Warm Speedup

Overall (top 100) 452s 226s 59s 2.0x 7.6x

ffmpeg 3034ms 3481ms 688ms 0.9x 4.4x

libsodium 2353ms 392ms 130ms 6.0x 18.1x

sqlite 2876ms 625ms 159ms 4.6x 18.1x

tesseract 18950ms

…

View on GitHub brew leaves

Show packages that are not dependencies of other packages. brew autoremove

Remove unused dependencies that are no longer needed. brew doctor

To diagnose and fix potential issues in my setup. brew cleanup

Remove stale lock files and outdated downloads. Usage: brew cleanup [options] [formula|cask ...]

Remove stale lock files and outdated downloads for all formulae and casks, and remove old versions of installed formulae. If arguments are specified, only do this for the given formulae and casks. Removes all downloads more than 120 days old. This can be adjusted with $HOMEBREW_CLEANUP_MAX_AGE_DAYS.

--prune Remove all cache files older than specified days. If you want to remove everything, use --prune=all.

-n, --dry-run Show what would be removed, but do not actually remove anything. -s, --scrub Scrub the cache, including downloads for even the latest versions. Note that downloads for any installed formulae or casks will still not be deleted. If you want to delete those too: rm -rf "$(brew --cache)" --prune-prefix Only prune the symlinks and directories from the prefix and remove no other files. -d, --debug Display any debugging information. -q, --quiet Make some output more quiet. -v, --verbose Make some output more verbose. -h, --help Show this message.

brew bundle dump

Create a Brewfile to snapshot your current setup. brew bundle --force cleanup

Uninstall everything not listed in your Brewfile. I have used the alias, brew_all .zshrc alias brew_all="brew outdated && brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup -s"