brew bundle dump silently fails to include MAS apps when using mas 7+ on macOS <15

[rgoldberg]

I am the developer of mas.

I have received reports that brew bundle dump silently fails to include MAS apps when using mas 7+ on macOS <15. See:

• mas: fix wrapper jq path on macOS <15 homebrew-core#291937
• mas: fix wrapper jq path on macOS <15 homebrew-core#291954
• mas 7.0.0 wrapper hardcodes /usr/bin/jq, fails on macOS <15 with restricted PATH mas-cli/mas#1274

I do not have older macOS versions on which to verify, but I have no reason to believe that the reports are incorrect.

I have been informed that this is because, when called by brew, mas cannot find jq in the path because brew sets PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin.

This problem doesn't occur for macOS 15+, which include a bundled /usr/bin/jq, which mas uses if it exists; mas only falls back to jq from the PATH when /usr/bin/jq doesn't exist.

I assume that the simplest way to solve this is for mas to support a MAS_JQ_PATH environment variable, so brew could do the equivalent of MAS_JQ_PATH=$(which jq) mas … for every mas call to a subcommand that supports --json (currently, there are only 2 such calls, one each for list & outdated; the single call each to get & upgrade are not affected, because neither supports --json, but you could set MAS_JQ_PATH=$(which jq) for all mas calls if you want).

Can Homebrew personnel either confirm that they want the aforementioned solution, or let me know if they prefer some other solution?

MAS_JQ_PATH would also function as a workaround for other setups that also exclude jq from the PATH, and would accommodate macOS 15+ users who for some reason need to use a different jq than the bundled /usr/bin/jq (maybe the bundled jq has a bug that is fixed in a newer version).

Thanks for any help.

CC: @piersolenski