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Homebrew

Formula install counts, dependencies, and metadata from the macOS package manager. Used as one of two inputs (alongside Debian) for the C/C++ ecosystem pipeline.

Data Sources

Formula metadata: formulae.brew.sh/api/formula.json -- all formulas with name, description, homepage, source URL, license, language, and dependencies.

Install analytics: formulae.brew.sh/api/analytics/install/365d.json -- 365-day install counts. Historical snapshots from Wayback Machine. Snapshots may be truncated (1 MB limit).

No authentication required.

Raw Data

In data/sources/homebrew/raw/:

  • formulas.csv -- name, tap, desc, license, homepage, source_url, language
  • dependencies.csv -- formula, dep_name, dep_type, fetched_at. Both runtime and build types are captured here, but the cpp pipeline filters to runtime only when building its dep tree (src/sources/cpp/process_data.py:277).
  • downloads.csv -- formula, year, downloads

Scripts

Script Purpose
src/sources/homebrew/fetch_homebrew_data.py Fetch formulas + analytics
src/sources/homebrew/process_data.py Build outputs 
uv run src/sources/homebrew/fetch_homebrew_data.py [--step formulas|analytics] [--years 2023 2024 2025]
uv run python -m src.sources.homebrew.process_data [--include-all-langs]

Outputs

In data/sources/homebrew/:

  • top-packages.csv, dependency-tree.csv, github-repos.csv, results.csv

Limitations

  • Opt-in analytics -- users can disable with brew analytics off; numbers are a fraction of actual installs.
  • Rolling 365-day windows -- each snapshot represents "installs in the 365 days ending at snapshot date", not a calendar year. A May 2023 snapshot is used as proxy for "2022" but actually covers Jun 2022 -- May 2023.
  • Sparse + truncated snapshots -- Wayback coverage is thin; some captures are truncated at exactly 1 MB (only the high-install head is recoverable via regex parsing). No usable 2021 snapshot exists.
  • Not comparable to npm/PyPI/crates -- represents macOS install events, not cross-platform package downloads.

Available Wayback snapshots for analytics/install/365d.json (2023--2026):

2023: May 09, May 31, Sep 30
2024: May 22, Oct 07
2025: Jan 21, Apr 27, Sep 11, Dec 05
2026: Mar 06

No snapshots before 2023. No install-on-request snapshots before Sep 2022.