homebrew-cask: gfortran cask duplicates the gcc formula in homebrew-core

I discovered today that there is a gfortran cask, which is distributing the gfortran installers that I build and make available. It’s been happening for 3 years and I never knew 😄

I don’t think that it fits the homebrew-cask rules, though:

despite their name, these installers are a full GCC install, not just gfortran
gfortran is fully part of GCC and cannot be separated, anyway
this is purely command-line software
that is already available as the gcc formula in homebrew-core

I could understand if the two distributions were different, but as I’m basically maintaining both, I don’t think it should be kept that way. I suggest the cask be removed and users redirected to the gcc formula.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 1
Comments: 24 (11 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

gcc: create gfortran alias See https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/96135. — committed to carlocab/homebrew-core by carlocab 4 years ago
Migrate gfortran to homebrew/core Closes https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/96135. — committed to carlocab/homebrew-cask by carlocab 4 years ago
Migrate gfortran to homebrew/core (#96504) Closes https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/96135. — committed to Homebrew/homebrew-cask by carlocab 4 years ago
gcc: create gfortran alias See https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/96135. — committed to Homebrew/homebrew-core by carlocab 4 years ago

Most upvoted comments

As I said, I don’t really see a reason one would want to install the cask over the formula. The reason I provide these standalone installers is only for some colleagues who want to have a gfortran install and don’t know / don’t want to learn how to install homebrew: the installer is a nice click-through.

I would highly recommend people who have brew installed to actually use the formula: it is more up-to-date, as well, and consistently provides the latest version of gfortran. If you look at the cask, you’ll see it provides:

nothing on Big Sur
10.2 on Catalina
8.2 on Mojave

fxcoudert on Dec 21, 2020

@carlocab Of course! btw there is a typo, 20 -> 19 😄

liuyadong on Dec 22, 2020

PRs opened:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/96504 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/67387

carlocab on Dec 21, 2020

for some colleagues

==> Analytics
install: 1,644 (30 days), 4,549 (90 days), 10,812 (365 days)

You have plenty of colleagues.

On a more serious note, I don’t see a reason why there should be a gfortran cask. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to:

Remove gfortran from homebrew-cask
Add "gfortran": "homebrew/core" to tap_migrations.json
Add an alias gfortran -> ../Formula/gcc.rb at homebrew-core

I think that should smooth the transition for everyone still using the cask, unless I’ve misunderstood how all of this works. (That’s certainly possible.)

Happy to open the necessary PRs if that solution works.

carlocab on Dec 21, 2020