M1 Mac has reverted HOMEBREW_PREFIX to /usr/local

[LwsBtlr]

I completely removed home-brew from my M1 Mac after migration nd reinstalled it in the new default location /opt/homebrew.

Today, Brew is showing me that HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local and nothing is working.

I did not change HOMEBREW_PREFIX because I have been unable to find out how to change it. The only thing that has changed is that I had to install the new Xcode command-line tools with the most recent 14.2 build. I do have links to the home-brew executables in /opt/homebrew/bin replicated in /usr/local/bin so that scripts continue to load the right binaries.

brew doctor also says my Xcode does not support macOS 11. I do not have Xcode installed on this machine, only the command-line tools and they are the current build for 11.2

While I am here, the switch to /opt/homebrew is a big bag of hurt.

$ brew config
zsh: correct 'config' to '.config' [nyae]? n
Warning: your HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local but HOMEBREW_CELLAR is set
to /opt/homebrew/Cellar. Your current HOMEBREW_CELLAR location will stop
you being able to use all the binary packages (bottles) Homebrew provides. We
recommend you move your HOMEBREW_CELLAR to /usr/local/Cellar which will get you
access to all bottles."
HOMEBREW_VERSION: >=2.5.0 (shallow or no git repository)
ORIGIN: (none)
HEAD: (none)
Last commit: never
Core tap ORIGIN: (none)
Core tap HEAD: (none)
Core tap last commit: never
Core tap branch: (none)
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
Homebrew Ruby: 2.6.3 => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit arm_firestorm_icestorm
Clang: 12.0 build 1200
Git: N/A
Curl: 7.64.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 11.2-arm64
CLT: 12.4.0.0.1.1610135815
Xcode: N/A
XQuartz: 2.7.11 => /opt/X11
Rosetta 2: false

[SMillerDev]

Today, Brew is showing me that HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local and nothing is working.

Are you running this in rosetta or not?

I do have links to the home-brew executables in /opt/homebrew/bin replicated in /usr/local/bin so that scripts continue to load the right binaries.

That might mess with brews capabilities to detect the correct install. @Homebrew/brew might know more about this.

---

While I am here, the switch to /opt/homebrew is a big bag of hurt.

You're always welcome to maintain your own package manager that installs where you want packages to be.

[MikeMcQuaid]

That might mess with brews capabilities to detect the correct install. @Homebrew/brew might know more about this.

Yes, it will. Don't do this.

[LwsBtlr]

No rosetta.

So Homebrew does not have a setting for the PREFIX, it tries to figure it out and there’s no way to tell it to behave and no way to have your executables in /usr/local/bin where decades worth of scripts expect them to be.

This is great.

And “maintain your own package manager” is what is known as a “not helpful response” but I will will keep that reply in mind before asking for help in the future.

[MikeMcQuaid]

I will will keep that reply in mind before asking for help in the future.

Please consider (re)reading our Code of Conduct and adjusting your future communication accordingly.

You probably consider what @SMillerDev said to be a bit rude, I consider your initial comment to be rude too. If you want volunteers to spend their free time helping you: you'll need to be a bit more polite about it.

[sjackman]

I do have links to the home-brew executables in /opt/homebrew/bin replicated in /usr/local/bin so that scripts continue to load the right binaries.

You could consider symlinking everything except /opt/homebrew/bin/brew to /usr/local/bin/, or putting /opt/homebrew/bin/ in your PATH before /usr/local/bin/, or both.

[LwsBtlr]

I tried symlinking binaries into /usr/local/bin, Homebrew sees the symlinks and breaks. hard links work until the packages is updated, then must be remade. (This is what I am doing since I do not want to edit hundreds of scripts to reflect the new forced location, not to mention that system level tools that check /usr/local/bin do not check /opt/homebrew so even more fixing is required.

I have no problem with recommending a new location (even strongly) so as not to interfere with intel installs, but I do have a problem with forcing a new location when there is no intel homebrew install to preserve. Anyway, it doesn’t matter since it’s not going to be changed.

[SMillerDev]

This is what I am doing since I do not want to edit hundreds of scripts to reflect the new forced location, not to mention that system level tools that check /usr/local/bin do not check /opt/homebrew so even more fixing is required.

Scripts could be fixed with grep or sed and system level tools will most likely check the PATH, which you can still set accordingly.

I have no problem with recommending a new location (even strongly) so as not to interfere with intel installs, but I do have a problem with forcing a new location when there is no intel homebrew install to preserve.

This is only part of the reason why the new location exists. The other part is that a lot of other parties like to write to /usr/local since it's a pretty standard directory. And in doing so often interfered with homebrew. The ARM release just gave us an option to pick a new location.

[jesphinpt]

I am getting below error in m1 mac. Any workarounds?

<internal:/Users/name/.rvm/rubies/ruby-3.0.2/lib/ruby/3.0.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb>:85:in `require': dlopen(/Users/name/.rvm/rubies/ruby-3.0.2/lib/ruby/3.0.0/arm64-darwin20/openssl.bundle, 9): Library not loaded: /opt/homebrew/opt/openssl@1.1/lib/libssl.1.1.dylib (LoadError)
  Referenced from: /Users/name/.rvm/rubies/ruby-3.0.2/lib/ruby/3.0.0/arm64-darwin20/openssl.bundle
  Reason: image not found - /Users/name/.rvm/rubies/ruby-3.0.2/lib/ruby/3.0.0/arm64-darwin20/openssl.bundle

uname -a
Darwin zurich.local 20.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 20.6.0: Wed Jun 23 00:26:27 PDT 2021; root:xnu-7195.141.2~5/RELEASE_ARM64_T8101 arm64

If I try to install openssl

brew install openssl
Warning: your HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local but HOMEBREW_CELLAR is set
to /opt/homebrew/Cellar. Your current HOMEBREW_CELLAR location will stop
you being able to use all the binary packages (bottles) Homebrew provides. We
recommend you move your HOMEBREW_CELLAR to /usr/local/Cellar which will get you
access to all bottles."
Warning: your HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local but HOMEBREW_CELLAR is set
to /opt/homebrew/Cellar. Your current HOMEBREW_CELLAR location will stop
you being able to use all the binary packages (bottles) Homebrew provides. We
recommend you move your HOMEBREW_CELLAR to /usr/local/Cellar which will get you
access to all bottles."
mkdir: /usr/local/var/homebrew/locks: Permission denied
Error: Can't create update lock in /usr/local/var/homebrew/locks!
Fix permissions by running:
  sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/var/homebrew
Warning: your HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local but HOMEBREW_CELLAR is set
to /opt/homebrew/Cellar. Your current HOMEBREW_CELLAR location will stop
you being able to use all the binary packages (bottles) Homebrew provides. We
recommend you move your HOMEBREW_CELLAR to /usr/local/Cellar which will get you
access to all bottles."
Error: Cannot install in Homebrew on ARM processor in Intel default prefix (/usr/local)!
Please create a new installation in /opt/homebrew using one of the
"Alternative Installs" from:
  https://docs.brew.sh/Installation
You can migrate your previously installed formula list with:
  brew bundle dump

[sebastianfeldmann]

I added a symlink from /usr/local/bin/brew to /opt/homebrew/bin/brew and ran into the same issue. Since brew is somehow checking the directory it was called from it assumed the HOMEBREW_PREFIX is /usr/local/bin

I removed the symlink and some other old stuff from /usr/local/bin and then it worked perfectly.

[sebastianfeldmann]

In my case I'm pretty certain that I created the symlink because I was a bit confused that brew wasn't working even as /usr/local/bin was in my $PATH. So the symlink was my attempt of a quick fix, that in hindsight didn't make sense at all.

Great that it now works on your end as well.

[jeffreytgilbert]

Just to clarify, is the current best practice here to create a bin folder in /usr/local and then add select symlinks to the arm installs in /opt/homebrew/bin?

Am I also correct in the understanding that creating /usr/local/bin as a symlink to /opt/homebrew/bin is a super bad idea because it's contrary to the goal of homebrew in creating its own isolated bin full of arm installs?

Lastly, when installing the current version homebrew on intel macs, do they still install to /usr/local/bin or is this also installed to /opt/homebrew?

I'm just ramping up with my Apple Silicon Macbook Pro and attempting to get Kubernetes going via Rancher Desktop. It appears as though that app does not yet support looking for binaries in paths outside of /usr/local/bin and I'm running the brew defaults in /opt/homebrew and want to push this arm experience as far as I can. I think what I'm seeing is that many users are just creating symlinks from /opt/homebrew/bin to /usr/local/bin and calling it a day. Link to issue here: rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop#1410 (comment)

[carlocab]

Just to clarify, is the current best practice here to create a bin folder in /usr/local and then add select symlinks to the arm installs in /opt/homebrew/bin?

The current best practice is to add /opt/homebrew/bin to your PATH (e.g. by using brew shellenv). Since that doesn't work for your use case, I'd investigate alternative methods first. One thing that might help is to create a file in /etc/paths.d containing only /opt/homebrew/bin. You can verify that this did something by checking your PATH without having added /opt/homebrew/bin to it yourself.

[jeffreytgilbert]

Thanks for the fast reply @carlocab. Just to make sure we're on the same page, I have no issues with brew functionality at all. I'm attempting a clean resolution for Rancher Desktop's inability to locate homebrew binaries. Via the default installation processes I've followed for homebrew on the default setup for Monterey, I've ended up in zsh with a .zprofile containing only one line, which is:

eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

So, I have no issues running homebrew installed commands from terminal. To be thorough though, I added a homebrew file with the path to /opt/homebrew/bin in /etc/paths.d and opened a new terminal window to check the output before restarting the Rancher Desktop application that is looking for links in /usr/local/bin. Here are the results:

echo $PATH before change:
/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Apple/usr/bin

echo $PATH after change:
/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Apple/usr/bin

Restarted Rancher Desktop app which shuts down kubernetes services and restarted it, however it still cannot resolve the paths, so my original assumption that it's looking only in /usr/local/bin for commands to run is probably still accurate. I have now removed the /etc/paths.d homebrew entry since it only duplicated the path to restore things to a simpler state, and I'm going to try adding a bin folder to /usr/local and creating symlinks to the /opt/homebrew/bin/ paths for only docker, helm, and kubectl. This probably resolves my app specific issue and I realize this is not specifically a homebrew problem, but rather a Rancher Desktop problem.

That said, so I can stay on the golden path, is it safe to say that creating a symlink in /usr/local as bin -> /opt/homebrew/bin is likely to result in problems with homebrew and should be avoided? If so, I believe what I'm doing is the only way to resolve this outside of updating the Rancher Desktop software directly.

[infa-ddeore]

I added a symlink from /usr/local/bin/brew to /opt/homebrew/bin/brew and ran into the same issue. Since brew is somehow checking the directory it was called from it assumed the HOMEBREW_PREFIX is /usr/local/bin

I removed the symlink and some other old stuff from /usr/local/bin and then it worked perfectly.

I also had created /usr/local/bin/brew symlink manually but as per your comment removed the symlink and added /opt/homebrew/bin and /opt/homebrew/sbin int PATH, it fixed the warnings.

$ brew doctor
Your system is ready to brew.

[DaveFlashNL]

any helpt to fix this error? I have no clue

"Warning: your HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local but HOMEBREW_CELLAR is set
to /opt/homebrew/Cellar. Your current HOMEBREW_CELLAR location will stop
you being able to use all the binary packages (bottles) Homebrew provides. We
recommend you move your HOMEBREW_CELLAR to /usr/local/Cellar which will get you
access to all bottles.""

[carlocab]

Ok, now it sees Homebrew, so that did do something. The next step is to work out what exactly it doesn't see, and why it's not seeing them. There are (at least) two possible explanations:

1. platinum-md checks PATH for these, but these aren't in your PATH for some reason. This might happen, for example, if they're not yet installed.
2. platinum-md doesn't check PATH. If this is the case, then you'd need to work out how it's meant to find them.

[DaveFlashNL]

I'm not sure what I did, but played around here and there, did various brew commands, but now it seems it is seeing a bit more ( I did put a symlink back):

renderer.js:56 stderr: Warning: your HOMEBREW_PREFIX is set to /usr/local but HOMEBREW_CELLAR is set
to /usr/local/homebrew/Cellar. Your current HOMEBREW_CELLAR location will stop
you being able to use all the binary packages (bottles) Homebrew provides. We
recommend you move your HOMEBREW_CELLAR to /usr/local/Cellar which will get you
access to all bottles."

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/libgcrypt/1.9.4_1 is not a valid keg

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/glib/2.70.1 is not a valid keg

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/libusb-compat/0.1.5_1 is not a valid keg

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/json-c/0.15 is not a valid keg

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/libusb/1.0.24 is not a valid keg

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/taglib/1.12 is not a valid keg

renderer.js:56 stderr: Error: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/libid3tag/0.15.1b is not a valid keg

but as you can see, it's not accepting them

[DaveFlashNL]

so update, on a whim I did a new x86_64 install of homebrew to the old location, did have to sudo rm -rf the opt/local/cellar thing from the native/universal version of homebrew, basically breaking the "good" install, but it was the only way to fix the path thing, and it did seem to take this time for platinum-md:

it now sees all the stuff, but it's also basically stuck on negotiating with device:

in the debugger it seems it can't really connect past the initial device handshake? is maybe a good word...

[carlocab]

You probably also need to be running an x86_64 plantinum-md for it to work with x86_64 Homebrew. If platinum-md is already x86_64, then I guess the problem is elsewhere.

[DaveFlashNL]

You probably also need to be running an x86_64 plantinum-md for it to work with x86_64 Homebrew. If platinum-md is already x86_64, then I guess the problem is elsewhere.

platinum md is an intel only app, so no, that is not the problem

[jmell-slg]

I found this issue comes up if you create a symlink for brew in /usr/local/bin that points to /opt/homebrew/bin/brew

if you remove that symlink everything seems to go back to normal.

[SMillerDev]

Yes, if the brew path is in /usr/local it runs in Rosetta mode

[sadmankiba]

Thanks, this solves the issue in my M2 mac. I reinstalled brew with install.sh script, added /opt/homebrew/bin to PATH and removed the symlink /usr/local/bin/brew.

[tjex]

In my case homebrew set eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)" in .zprofile, yet when I run which brew I get usr/local.
From this thread I'm understanding this could be from /usr/local appearing in my $PATH before opt/homebrew/.

I placed eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)" in my .zshrc and now brew is running from opt/homebrew instead. I hope it helps / sheds some light for someone else.

Many thanks to the devs, maintainers and contributors for the life saving package manager and extra time spent trouble shooting!! 🙏

[jiangzhonglian]

I guess you must do this！

$ which brew
/usr/local/bin/brew
$ brew shellenv
export HOMEBREW_PREFIX="/usr/local";

I fund old path: brew -> /usr/local/bin/brew -> /usr/local/Homebrew/bin/brew

How to fix ?

you can do:

$ rm /usr/local/bin/brew     # must do this step, because it link /usr/local
$ eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"
$ which brew      # you can see: brew ->  /opt/homebrew/bin/brew
$ brew shellenv
export HOMEBREW_PREFIX="/opt/homebrew";

You win！