brew install upgrades everything

[chasrmartin]

This is new behavior. If I do brew install x, brew first does brew update — which makes some sense — then installs the new package. But then it upgrades everything else.

Often I don't want to upgrade everything else, either because I have code using the current versions, or because I just don't want to spend the time to upgrade everything which involves a lot of network traffic and sometimes lengthy compilations.

Worse yet is what I just observed: I did brew install nmap. After installing nmap, brew proceeded to update a whole bunch of other things, including updating erlang. Or rather, trying to, because the erlang update failed. the erl command works, at least, but it's not immediately obvious if there is something else broken; I'll need to do regression tests on my erlang code.

This particular change in behavior is a mistake that should be corrected. What's more, this isn't the first time the behavior of the brew command has changed by surprise. It's really hard to use brew in any larger project we one can't depend that it will work the same way.

[iMichka]

brew deps nmap shows that this package depends on openssl@1.1. Openssl was updated to version 1.1.1h, to provide you the latest security fixes.

brew uses openssl@1.1 shows that erlang depends on openssl@1.1 too. So we update that package too. It's called a reverse dependency.

What would you expect? Leaving a broken erlang package is not an option.

And this is not a change in behaviour: as far as I recall, we have done it this way for years now.

[psifertex]

FYI -- I just double checked the FAQ and saw no references to brew install upgrading other packages.

It talks about pinning and it talks about how brew upgrade can upgrade other things (which is far more intuitive than "I'm installing a new package and it will upgrade other packages" which is the main thread we're discussing here).

Did I miss a different answer?

[cen1]

Just installed nmap, ended up with upgraded Postgres database. This is the most ridiculous "feature" ever. No prompt, just full speed ahead essentially nuking the entire system.

[ismay]

Just installed nmap, ended up with upgraded Postgres database. This is the most ridiculous "feature" ever. No prompt, just full speed ahead essentially nuking the entire system.

Yeah exactly

[ihuk]

Who thought this was a good idea? I installed some stupid utility and it went ahead and basically did a system update. And why would it upgrade Postgres!?

[guptamitesh]

Developer has taken on his ego it seems. Seriously just give a warning its going to change so much and I will live happily with whatever version I had previously.