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  1. Stackups
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  3. Homebrew vs RubyGems

Homebrew vs RubyGems

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Homebrew
Homebrew
Stacks588
Followers515
Votes3
GitHub Stars45.3K
Forks10.6K
RubyGems
RubyGems
Stacks6.9K
Followers15
Votes0

Homebrew vs RubyGems: What are the differences?

Homebrew vs RubyGems

Homebrew and RubyGems are both package managers used in the world of macOS and Ruby, respectively. While both serve the purpose of simplifying the installation and management of software packages, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Package Scope: Homebrew is a package manager for macOS, offering a wide range of software and libraries that are not necessarily related to Ruby. On the other hand, RubyGems is specific to the Ruby programming language, focusing solely on Ruby gems and libraries.

  2. Package Management Approach: Homebrew follows the formula-driven approach, which means that each package it manages has its own recipe or formula that defines how it should be built and installed. In contrast, RubyGems relies on gem specifications, which are metadata files that provide information about a gem's dependencies and other relevant details.

  3. System Dependencies: Homebrew manages system-level dependencies and can handle software written in various programming languages. This versatility enables Homebrew to install packages with complex dependencies, even if they are not related to Ruby. However, RubyGems only manages dependencies related to Ruby libraries and gems.

  4. Installation Locations: Homebrew installs packages in independent directories under /usr/local/Cellar/, ensuring that different versions of the same package can coexist. In contrast, RubyGems installs gems in a central location specific to each version of Ruby, such as /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/.

  5. Versions and Upgrades: Homebrew allows for the installation and management of different versions of a package, making it easy to switch between them if needed. RubyGems, on the other hand, focuses on managing the latest version of a gem and simplifies the upgrade process.

  6. Community Support: Homebrew has a larger community and wider user base compared to RubyGems. This larger community provides a more extensive collection of formulas and continuous development and improvement of the software. RubyGems, while having a substantial community of its own, is more specific to the Ruby programming language.

In summary, Homebrew is a versatile package manager for macOS that handles various software, while RubyGems focuses exclusively on managing gems and libraries related to the Ruby programming language. While both serve the purpose of simplifying package installation and management, they differ in their scope, approach, system dependencies, installation locations, version management, and community support.

Detailed Comparison

Homebrew
Homebrew
RubyGems
RubyGems

Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t. Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local.

It is a package manager for the Ruby programming language that provides a standard format for distributing Ruby programs and libraries, a tool designed to easily manage the installation of gems, and a server for distributing them.

-
Package manager; Instantly publish your gems ; Easily manage the installation of gems
Statistics
GitHub Stars
45.3K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
10.6K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
588
Stacks
6.9K
Followers
515
Followers
15
Votes
3
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 3
    Clean, neat, powerful, fast and furious
No community feedback yet
Integrations
Ruby
Ruby
cURL
cURL
GNU Bash
GNU Bash
Ruby
Ruby

What are some alternatives to Homebrew, RubyGems?

Meteor

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

Bower

Bower

Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.

Elm

Elm

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

Julia

Julia

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library.

Racket

Racket

It is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp. It is designed to be a platform for programming language design and implementation. It is also used for scripting, computer science education, and research.

PureScript

PureScript

A small strongly typed programming language with expressive types that compiles to JavaScript, written in and inspired by Haskell.

Composer

Composer

It is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.

pnpm

pnpm

It uses hard links and symlinks to save one version of a module only ever once on a disk. When using npm or Yarn for example, if you have 100 projects using the same version of lodash, you will have 100 copies of lodash on disk. With pnpm, lodash will be saved in a single place on the disk and a hard link will put it into the node_modules where it should be installed.

Active Admin

Active Admin

Active Admin is a Ruby on Rails framework for creating elegant backends for website administration.

StimulusReflex

StimulusReflex

It is an exciting new way to build modern, reactive, real-time apps with Ruby on Rails. It eliminates the complexity imposed by full-stack frontend frameworks. And, it's fast. It works seamlessly with the Rails tooling you already know and love.

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