[HN Gopher] Show HN: Applite - Clean Homebrew front end app for ...
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Show HN: Applite - Clean Homebrew front end app for macOS built
with SwiftUI
Author : milanvarady
Score : 171 points
Date : 2023-08-10 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aerolite.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (aerolite.dev)
| sharp11 wrote:
| I'm not the target audience (I prefer CLI), but as an iOS dev
| just wanted to say kudos. Great idea and looks to be very well
| executed. I'm curious to know how your experience with SwiftUI
| was on MacOS?
| milanvarady wrote:
| Very mixed. I hadn't done any app development before this
| project, only games with Gamemaker and the Godot engine. Coming
| from that background, SwiftUI was very easy to pick up. In
| general, if SwiftUI has the feature or UI element you want,
| it's super nice and concise. If it doesn't, you're pretty much
| screwed. Also, Apple doesn't really understand the term
| "backwards compatibility" when it comes to SwiftUI. Without
| doing a ton of work on workarounds, I was only able to target
| Ventura or newer.
| Syzygies wrote:
| I applaud this, for people who prefer a GUI interface.
|
| I started to write something to better organize synchronizing my
| Homebrew installation across multiple machines, then thought
| someone must have done this well already. Sure enough,
|
| https://pumpingco.de/blog/brewfile/
|
| A fantastic, clean way to reinstall or synchronize Homebrew
| setups, using the command line. I'm surprised that Applite
| doesn't accept a brewfile to ease migration.
|
| In my case I depend on Bash, Tailscale, and Ruby as installed by
| Homebrew, so a clean reinstallation is delicate. I have scripts
| to make sure I don't screw this up:
|
| 1 brew bundle dump.sh 2 uninstall homebrew.sh 3 install
| homebrew.sh 4 renew bash.sh 5 renew tailscale.sh 6 renew ruby.sh
| 7 renew brew bundle.sh choose-shell.sh
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I have an idempotent provision script I use to install/update
| apps. The homebrew portion is basically brew
| upgrade HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 brew bundle
| --file=Brewfile --cleanup --no-upgrade
|
| Works really nicely to keep everything tidy, up-to-date, and
| transferable.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| One more neat trick for Brewfiles: They're evaluated as Ruby
| code, so you can use if-else etc. to conditionally install
| things on different machines with a single Brewfile. I use that
| together with yadm to manage both work and private laptops with
| minimum duplication.
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| I wonder if you'd have a monetization path here via enterprise
| support contracts and/or additional device fleet management
| features. The tech companies I've worked at have all had some
| amount of "use brew to install ..." in our dev spinup docs. And
| IT doesn't love it because when they get asked to support it,
| there's no quick way to see what's installed or what version
| without logging into the specific machine. And for whatever
| reason, it's also challenging to roll out dev laptops with
| specific packages already installed. I presume it's because
| maintaining them is difficult.
| Ambroos wrote:
| There's a decent open source option:
| https://github.com/munki/munki
|
| I got to use it at work at Meta (as end user), and it seemed to
| work quite well. They delivered Android SDKs/IDEs and a bunch
| of other things that I'd personally install through Brew with
| Munki.
| ljm wrote:
| Assuming everyone's on a Mac, I'm actually surprised there
| isn't that much use of something like homebrew-bundle[1]. It's
| definitely nicer to have your tooling run natively rather than,
| say, trying to wrap everything in Docker, or trying to get
| everybody on board with nix or guix.
|
| I think the only real issue here is that you can't really pin
| to specific versions unless a formula exists, and there is no
| guarantee that a formula with a pinned version will stick
| around because homebrew likes to stay lean. So to that extent
| it can still be unclear what version of software someone is
| running on after enough time.
|
| [1]https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle/
| tough wrote:
| This sounds like a great idea and a good COSS lifestyle company
| to run
| tmikaeld wrote:
| That's my first thought as well, there's a lot of IT companies
| supporting Macs that would LOVE a tool like this, especially if
| it's commercially supported.
| _1 wrote:
| My company manages Macs with jamf. It comes with a "self
| service" tool that can install oss apps, apps we've licensed,
| change configurations, etc.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Same here. There are at least a few of such tools, and they
| are highly customizable.
| zapw wrote:
| > What information does Applite track?
|
| > None.
|
| Absolutely love this part of the page---we need more software
| with this philosophy. Kudos.
| kryptozinc wrote:
| What is your monetization strategy with this app?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I love the guy's actual answer. It's always interesting to see
| this be a question. What is yum's monetization strategy? What
| is apt's? Does any package manager have a monetization
| strategy? If anything, they might be components to a larger
| distro that itself sells enterprise support packages, but the
| software itself is rarely if ever monetized. Homebrew is BSD-
| licensed and currently run by a nonprofit. The original
| developer never tried to make it into a product and "monetized"
| by parlaying the experience he gained doing it into highly paid
| engineering jobs in spite of having no formal training in
| computer science or software development, and eventually
| started his own company when he got tired of working for Apple.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Does everything have to have a monetization strategy?
| kryptozinc wrote:
| I don't want to be the "product" of this free app.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| As a user of an app, its always a fair question to ask.
|
| "Free" usually means you are the product.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| "Open Source" means you are not though.
| e12e wrote:
| No, capital F Free (as in freedom ) usually does not mean
| that. Closed source and gratis often do.
|
| You're not "the product" for the Apache web server or the
| Linux kernel...
| tchbnl wrote:
| This being HN, I can't tell if this comment is a joke or not.
| milanvarady wrote:
| Nothing. It's a passion project of mine. I accept donations to
| cover the Apple Developer Program fees.
| w10-1 wrote:
| There would be a lot of value in whitelist and audit features
| for IT to manage their risk when letting developers install
| applications themselves (if not also a binary repository).
|
| One model (and possible partner) here is Sonatype, with a
| growth path into binary repositories for development (Swift
| packages, cocoa pods et al).
|
| I realize you might not want the burden, but you might
| partner with someone or some company. (And I would encourage
| others to collaborate before forking.)
| merryje wrote:
| It has an MIT license on GitHub
|
| https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| I am not a license expert, but doesn't MIT mean we can build
| upon it with proprietary changes and then sell it as
| proprietary software?
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Yes.
| threesevenths wrote:
| Any tracking or privacy concerns we should be aware of that a
| polite adds on top of home brew? For example, does a polite
| collect data on the type of device, installed casks, user data,
| anything?
| milanvarady wrote:
| Applite developer here. No, Applite has zero tracking built in,
| it's a 100% free and open-source. Only Homebrew tracks the
| number of downloads.
| vaxman wrote:
| If you want to track, charge or close-source your code, it is
| okay, the Streisand-effect from all the freeloaders will save
| you.
| driggs wrote:
| This is in the FAQ, which you don't even need to click to read
| from the front page:
|
| https://aerolite.dev/applite/index.html#details
| > Q: What information does Applite track? > A: None.
| campfireshuffle wrote:
| In a similar vein, I created a web tool that can take your cask
| selection, save it to a temporary link and let you install all
| apps without creating an account https://coldbrew.vercel.app
| fewald_net wrote:
| So many animation on this website.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| This is the "Username checks out" comment of HN.
| dreadlordbone wrote:
| Thats AOS for ya [1]
|
| [1]https://michalsnik.github.io/aos/
| catskull wrote:
| Just looking at your site now. I'm inspired by your projects
| page.
| dimmke wrote:
| There's another decent application for this called Cakebrew, but
| not sure if it uses native Apple UI APIs
| milanvarady wrote:
| As far as I know, Cakebrew is no longer maintained. There are
| quite a few alternatives though, you can see the full list on
| the GitHub page
| (https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite#alternatives)
| dmix wrote:
| I was browsering through the app list, which is like a store,
| that's cool.
|
| Does anyone know an good open source apps for limiting the amount
| of time you spend on distracting sites (like HN)? I've found some
| firefox extensions but nothing very good.
| server_man3000 wrote:
| Dude, neat!
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Neat project, can I swap out brew and use macports?
| milanvarady wrote:
| No. I'm not currently planning to add macports support. If a
| lot of people request it, I might consider it, but it would be
| a lot of work.
| e12e wrote:
| Tbh, I'm not sure if mixing the two in one app would make
| sense. Maybe a second app at one point?
|
| I moved from macports to brew as for a long while there were
| no build servers for arm for macports - having to regularly
| build clang and gcc from source just to patch a few utilities
| is not much fun. But I believe that's been fixed for a while.
|
| I honestly think brew's policy of "latest, nothing or
| @specialcase" isn't great for a stable work environment. But
| it has a lot of mind share.
|
| In my view NixOS is too much, GNU Guix for better or worse
| won't support propitary toolchains like Mac, pkgsrc looks
| best on paper - but seems abandoned? Which leaves macports as
| perhaps the best option and homebrew a close second.
| ljm wrote:
| I find myself preferring macports for a lot of things, but
| homebrew has brought its own niceness to the table.
|
| It's just a bit of a nightmare as a software author because
| so much rework is done to repackage your stuff in _n_
| formats: one for nix, one for guix, one for debian, one for
| redhat, one for homebrew, one for macports, snap, flatpak,
| AUR, cross-compilation for alpine, maybe add a PPA in there
| for the ubuntu fans...and then some of them try to wrap
| packages on npm, rubygems, pypi, etc.
|
| it's all done by the community but at the same time, so
| many of the people you want to help with your software
| won't touch it if their only option is to clone the repo
| and compile it (which in itself is _simple_ , if done
| thoughtfully)
| gorbypark wrote:
| Does it only do Casks, or CLI apps as well?
| milanvarady wrote:
| Just casks
| dmix wrote:
| Seems to just like my cask apps in the UI.
| efitz wrote:
| Where do the app icons come from?
| milanvarady wrote:
| From a similar project called App Fair (https://github.com/App-
| Fair/App). They have a separate repo containing supplemental
| data for casks.
| pheeney wrote:
| Installed via brew cask command and get the following error:
|
| App load error Couldn't load app catalog. Check internet your
| connection, or try restarting the app.
|
| I am running LuLu which I allowed the process to go through,
| tried to Retry and Quit but doesn't work for me.
|
| My 2c, I like the logo on the website better than the app icon.
| The heavy drop shadows make it a bit dated. The website logo is
| minimal and clean in comparison and would look nice in the dock.
| pheeney wrote:
| I think it was a DNS issue. I changed my DNS servers and now it
| works. Great project!
| macrael wrote:
| My first thought is that it's a classic macOS dev strategy to
| take a CLI tool and build a UI for it. In retrospect brew is a
| perfect candidate
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(page generated 2023-08-10 23:01 UTC)