What is the best/safest way to reinstall Homebrew?

macos homebrew
AndrewKS picture AndrewKS · Jun 14, 2012 · Viewed 130.8k times · Source

I am getting issues with permissions in Homebrew: After I installed Node and tried to install npm using the curl command Homebrew tells you to use, it would fail due to EACCESS errors. I checked the node folder and the permissions were a) unowned by a user (I had to chown it) and b) Had no write permissions (I had to chmod 755 it).

I've fixed the issue with NPM, but I had to run its install script as sudo (which is bad!).

I assume I must have installed Homebrew as root or something similar. I am hoping that reinstallation will fix it, but I can't find a source on how to reinstall Homebrew.

When I rerun the installer in Terminal I get:

/usr/local/.git already exists!

Answer

Ming C picture Ming C · Apr 16, 2016

Update 10/11/2020 to reflect the latest brew changes.

Brew already provide a command to uninstall itself:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall.sh)"

If you failed to run this command due to permission (like run as second user), run again with sudo

Then you can install again:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Related questions

How can I start PostgreSQL server on Mac OS X?

Final update: I had forgotten to run the initdb command. By running this command ps auxwww | grep postgres I see that postgres is not running > ps auxwww | grep postgres remcat 1789 0.0 0.0 2434892 480 s000 R+ 11:28PM 0:00.00 grep postgres This raises the question: …

Read More
How do you update Xcode on OSX to the latest version?

What is the easiest way to update Xcode on OSX? I see this in the terminal: $ brew install xxxxxxx Warning: Your Xcode (4.3.3) is outdated Please install Xcode 4.6. But when I go to open up Xcode > Preferences > Downloads, it …

Read More
How to fix homebrew permissions?

I have uninstalled and installed Homebrew 3 times now because it seems to never allow me to install anything as it denies me permissions at the end of most installations. As an example I will post this libjpeg download scenario that …

Read More