Add to ~/.Brewfile on install

[johndbritton]

I have a global ~/.Brewfile that I use to manage everything installed on my Mac.

Whenever I install something new, it usually goes something like this:

1. Find an app I want to install
2. brew search name
3. brew install name
4. edit ~/.Brewfile to add the app

Is there a way to do this in one step, something like brew install name --save or brew bundle add name? I've searched around but haven't found anything that does what I'm looking for. If it doesn't exist, where would be the best place to send a PR brew or homebrew-bundle? Is this something that you'd accept a pull request for?

[Rylan12]

One thing that may make your life easier: brew bundle dump --global will automatically write all your currently installed formulae/casks/etc. to ~/.Brewfile, saving you the manual edit step (assuming you want all of your currently installed formulae in the brewfile).

If that's not what you're looking for, I could see a brew bundle add <formula> and brew bundle remove <formula> being useful. This would belong in the Homebrew/homebrew-bundle repo. If you want feedback on the idea before spending time implementing it, you should open an issue there to get maintainer feedback (not sure how many of the folks who work on brew bundle follow these discussions so you'll probably get better feedback there)

Since the brew bundle functionality is in a separate tap that users may not have, I think adding a flag to brew install probably is a no-go.

Hope that's helpful

[gromgit]

One thing that may make your life easier: brew bundle dump --global

Yeah, that's in my crontab on every Homebrew box (Linux and macOS), scheduled to run 5 minutes before the nightly backup. @johndbritton , unless you need up-to-the-minute Brewfiles, this might be a more practical way to get what you want.

[johndbritton]

I'm aware of brew bundle dump --global but I don't necessarily want every installed package to be in my Brewfile. I'll open an issue to discuss on https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle.

[johndbritton]

Opened an issue here: Homebrew/homebrew-bundle#818