Install an older version of Homebrew on macOS 10.13 High Sierra [solved]

[h-archer]

Hi,

I have to deliver my finished website today to my client, but on this day, on my old laptop, that is only able to go to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, I made the MASSIVE mistake of running "brew upgrade"!!!

It ran for 2 hrs. Then, broke everything on my local dev environment Completely! Php, Valet, nginx, its all not running now... Spent the whole days searching but cannot find a way to revert homebrew back.

Now I am STUCK!! With a client that wants to have his website!

So I uninstalled homebrew. Now I need to install Homebrew version 2.2.12, which seems to be the last compatible version with macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

How do I install this version of Homebrew Please (version 2.2.12)? Can anyone help please?

[carlocab]

brew code is all in git, so going back to an earlier version just involves checking out the right tag. However, the bigger challenge is going back in time to find the bottles that worked on High Sierra. Those all lived on Bintray, but Bintray is now gone.

[h-archer]

Just installed brew and its on 3.1.8. And here's what brew doctor returns:

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

Warning: Unbrewed header files were found in /usr/local/include.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected header files:
  /usr/local/include/wkhtmltox/image.h
  /usr/local/include/wkhtmltox/pdf.h

Warning: Unbrewed '.la' files were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected '.la' files:
  /usr/local/lib/libhtsjava.la
  /usr/local/lib/libhttrack.la

Warning: Unbrewed static libraries were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected static libraries:
  /usr/local/lib/libhtsjava.a
  /usr/local/lib/libhttrack.a

Warning: You have unlinked kegs in your Cellar.
Leaving kegs unlinked can lead to build-trouble and cause formulae that depend on
those kegs to fail to run properly once built. Run brew link on these:
  nginx
  dnsmasq

Warning: You are using macOS 10.13.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
You will encounter build failures with some formulae.
Please create pull requests instead of asking for help on Homebrew's GitHub,
Twitter or any other official channels. You are responsible for resolving
any issues you experience while you are running this
old version.


Warning: Some installed formulae are missing dependencies.
You should brew install the missing dependencies:
  brew install apr apr-util argon2 aspell autoconf brotli c-ares curl freetds freetype gdbm gettext glib gmp icu4c jemalloc jpeg krb5 libev libffi libidn2 libmetalink libpng libpq libsodium libssh2 libtiff libtool libunistring libzip m4 mpdecimal nghttp2 openldap openssl@1.1 pcre python@3.9 readline rtmpdump sqlite tidy-html5 unixodbc webp xz zstd

Run brew missing for more details.

How can I resolve these warnings?

[SMillerDev]

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

If your install is otherwise fine you can just ignore the warnings. brew install php7@.3 mariadb valet should install what you want.

[h-archer]

Thanks @SMillerDev
My only concern is that if I re-install mariadb, will this deleted my current databases?
And if I re-install php7.3, will I loose my php.ini configs?

Can't I just re-enable php/nginx/valet/mariadb? because they are installed but I just need to activate them with the new brew.

[SMillerDev]

brew install won't delete data, brew reinstall might.

Can't I just re-enable php/nginx/valet/mariadb? because they are installed but I just need to activate them with the new brew.

brew doesn't know an "enable" concept. Something is either installed or not. brew ls will tell you what's installed.

[pacman-admin]

same here!!!
I have a 21.5 inch iMac 2011 and running brew upgrade broke EVERYTHING!!!
Openldap simply refuses to upgrade and curl has weird errors.

[h-archer]

So homebrew is now latest version 3.1.8 and brew doctor has no warnings (other than the message that my macos is old).

I tried to install php but I get the following error (image below) during the install. It also asks for a keychain password for github in a popup. Not sure what that is about. Same error when trying to install php7.3, 7.4 and 8. Also when trying to install mariadb.

What should I try next? Why doesn't php even install??

[SMillerDev]

Whenever someone has time to merge it and CI is green.

[h-archer]

@SMillerDev btw thanks for creating the patch. I hope this enables me to install php/valet etc...

[h-archer]

@SMillerDev, One test just failed and I urgently need this patch on my machine. Is there a way to manually apply this patch and not have to wait?

[carlocab]

There is, but it requires some proficiency with GitHub. The gh command-line tool would be helpful here. However, I've triggered a merge for Homebrew/homebrew-core#77596, and it should be available in a few minutes now. You'll need to brew update.

[h-archer]

Thanks @carlocab, much appreciated!

php@7.3 has installed :). Now I have the same issue with mariadb. Please see my post below.

[h-archer]

I have just managed to install php@7.3 successfully thanks to the patch from @SMillerDev and the support from the other guys. Thank you.

Now I am having the same issue with mariadb. I did a brew update followed by brew install mariadb. It failed at the last step while installing mariadb (please see image). Does this also need a patch for mariadb?

[h-archer]

Thank you so much @carlocab. You'll be glad to know that I made the change to mariadb, as you instructed, and it has installed successfully! And the website that I was working on is RUNNING locally again!!!! You guys have saved me and now I can carry on finishing my work!

Thanks to @carlocab, @SMillerDev and @gromgit. I don't think I'll be doing a brew upgrade any time soon that's for sure!

[carlocab]

Glad you're up and running again.

You might want to try brew pin:

❯ brew help pin
Usage: brew pin installed_formula [...]

Pin the specified formula, preventing them from being upgraded when issuing
the brew upgrade formula command. See also unpin.

  -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.

And please consider upgrading to a laptop running an OS that Apple still supports :)

[h-archer]

Thanks for that tip about pinning a formula! I will look into that.

And please consider upgrading to a laptop running an OS that Apple still supports :)

This experience has made me realise that it might be time to upgrade. Definitely.

[gromgit]

This experience has made me realise that it might be time to upgrade. Definitely.

And set up some sort of backup. Helping others recover from lost data is something that's not part of $DAYJOB, but I end up doing it far too often regardless.

[h-archer]

Yes @gromgit. I am very lucky this time. I will be planning to upgrade and have a backup setup.

Let this issue be a reminder for others to have a backup setup in place.

[iguvenilir]

So What is actually the procedure to install brew on mac high sierra ?
Can somebody put instructions 1, 2, 3. please.

[gromgit]

1. Follow the instructions on the Homebrew home page under Install Homebrew.
2. If the installer doesn't work for some reason, try the Untar anywhere method documented here.

Once either of the above completes without error, you now face the hardest part of all: building every formula you need and all their dependencies from source. Some formulae may no longer build under High Sierra for various reasons; you'll have to figure out what to do then.

[konnano]

In order to use home brew in 10.13, it is necessary to devise installation for each formula