Anki homebrew issues (terminal and crash on exit)

[giragira]

@wojtek

It’s not like linux package manager from a distro that they rebuild (ad nauseum…) all the packages but rather uses a descriptor with the information about version, download location and hashcode for verification.

Homebrew does have formulas and casks. For the former, they build binaries. Not sure if anybody got nausea yet, though.

@wojtek

So it’s using Anki packages and it’s a way to make installing and maintaining packages up-to-date without having to go scour the internet looking for downloads…

Well there aren’t really Anki packages anymore. Maybe the current cask should get renamed from anki to anki-launcher or something?

@wojtek

As I user I want to download the complete app with sane and tested set of dependencies…

Ok guess I shouldn’t have mentioned that particular part. Of course as long as one doesn’t tinker with it, everybody gets the same set of dependencies. For some debugging purposes it’s now easier to change up things, but yes agreed that this shouldn’t be done in the general case.

@wojtek

Homebrew doesn’t provide any builds (why would it)? it relies on available stuff.

Let’s not discuss package management philosophy. As Homebrew understands itself as a package manager, I only mentioned it providing builds as a possibility. Never did I say anything “Homebrew should definitely do this”.

@wojtek

There is no “Check for updates” inside Anki because… it relies on the shell launcher

Tools > Upgrade/Downgrade. This invokes the launcher, but it does check for updates.

Other ideas:

1. If the cask doesn’t provide Anki itself but just the launcher (as that’s all it realistically can do), and is ideally renamed appropriately, version numbering should be used that reflects changes in the launcher instead of Anki. Because there is merit in updating it in case it changes, but also it’s not needed to update it for every Anki update as that is taken care of by the launcher itself. The only problem being that there doesn’t seem to be any distinct version numbering for the launcher right now.

2. As Homebrew is really just installing the launcher, and that one currently does not have a GUI yet, it technically makes it an open-source CLI-only software. According to homebrew rules it should be a formula, not a cask. (“App is both open-source and CLI-only (i.e. it only uses the binary artifact). In that case, and in the spirit of deduplication, submit it first to homebrew/core as a formula that builds from source. If it is rejected, you may then try again as a cask”)

3. There is also another Homebrew rule: App is open-source and has a GUI but no compiled versions (or only old ones) are provided. It’s better to have them in homebrew/core so users don’t get perpetually outdated versions. This, too, seems to apply here if we think about Anki in general. Anki itself obviously does have a GUI but only old compiled versions are provided.