How to Create and Maintain a Tap

Taps are external sources of Homebrew formulae, casks and/or external commands. They can be created by anyone to provide their own formulae, casks and/or external commands to any Homebrew user.

Creating a tap

A tap is usually a Git repository available online, but you can use anything as long as it’s a protocol that Git understands, or even just a directory with files in it. If hosted on GitHub, we recommend that the repository’s name start with homebrew- so the short brew tap command can be used. See the brew manual page for more information on repository naming.

The brew tap-new command can be used to create a new tap along with some template files:

$ brew tap-new $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap
Initialized empty Git repository in /opt/homebrew/Library/Taps/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap/.git/
...
==> Created $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/tap
/opt/homebrew/Library/Taps/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap

This creates a local tap with the proper directory structure. Next, you can push it to a new GitHub repository by running (from any directory):

$ brew install gh
...
$ gh repo create $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap --push --public --source "$(brew --repository $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap)"
✓ Created repository $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap on github.com
  https://github.com/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap
✓ Added remote https://github.com/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap.git
...
✓ Pushed commits to https://github.com/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap.git

Assuming you leave the default .github/workflows files in place, “bottles” (binary packages) will be built and uploaded to GitHub Releases.

If you run brew tap-new --github-packages, you can upload to GitHub Packages instead.

Tap formulae follow the same format as the core’s ones, and can be added under either the Formula subdirectory, the HomebrewFormula subdirectory or the repository’s root. The first available directory is used, other locations will be ignored. We recommend the use of subdirectories because it makes the repository organisation easier to grasp, and top-level files are not mixed with formulae.

See homebrew/core for an example of a tap with a Formula subdirectory.

Creating your formula or cask

Run brew create to create a formula or cask file in your tap and open it in your text editor:

$ brew create https://mirror.ibcp.fr/pub/gnu/wget/wget-1.25.0.tar.gz --tap $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap --set-name $YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME-wget
==> Downloading from https://mirror.ibcp.fr/pub/gnu/wget/wget-1.25.0.tar.gz
...
Editing /opt/homebrew/Library/Taps/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/homebrew-tap/Formula/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME-wget.rb

After that, follow the Adding Software to Homebrew guide to create your formula or cask file.

Finally, git add, git commit and git push your formula or cask to your tap and others can use it too.

Naming your formulae to avoid clashes

If a formula in your tap has the same name as a Homebrew/homebrew-core formula they cannot be installed side-by-side. If you wish to create a different version of a formula that’s in Homebrew/homebrew-core (e.g. with options) consider giving it a different name; e.g. nginx-full for a more full-featured nginx formula. This will allow both nginx and nginx-full to be installed at the same time (assuming one is keg-only or the linked files do not clash).

Installing

There are two ways users can install formulae from your tap:

Direct installation (recommended)

Users can install any of your formulae directly with brew install user/repository/formula. Homebrew will automatically add your tap before installing the formula:

$ brew install alice/homebrew-tap/my-script
==> Tapping alice/homebrew-tap
Cloning into '/opt/homebrew/Library/Taps/alice/homebrew-tap'...
...
==> Installing my-script from alice/homebrew-tap

This is the most convenient method for users as it requires only one command.

Manual tap installation

To install your tap without installing any formula at the same time, users can add it with the brew tap command:

# For GitHub repositories
$ brew tap user/repository

# For repositories hosted elsewhere
$ brew tap user/repo <URL>

Where user is your GitHub username, repository is your repository name, and <URL> is your Git clone URL for non-GitHub repositories.

After tapping, users can install your formulae either with:

brew install foo if there’s no core formula with the same name
brew install user/repository/foo to avoid conflicts with core formulae

Maintaining a tap

A tap is just a Git repository so you don’t have to do anything specific when making modifications, apart from committing and pushing your changes.

Updating

Once your tap is installed, Homebrew will update it each time a user runs brew update. Outdated formulae will be upgraded when a user runs brew upgrade, like core formulae.

Best practices

Keep your tap up to date: Regularly update your formulae to the latest versions of the software you’re packaging
Test your formulae: Before pushing changes, test your formulae locally with brew install --build-from-source user/repository/formula
Use semantic versioning: Tag your releases with version numbers (e.g. 1.0.0) to make it easier for users to track changes
Provide clear documentation: Include a README in your tap repository explaining what your formulae do and how to use them
Handle dependencies: Make sure your formulae properly declare all dependencies using depends_on

Troubleshooting

Formula not found after installation: Make sure your formula file is in the correct location (Formula/ subdirectory) and has the right file extension (.rb).
Installation fails: Check that your formula’s url and sha256 values are correct. You can verify the SHA256 with:
```
curl -L <URL> | shasum -a 256
```
Tap not updating: Users may need to run brew untap user/repository && brew tap user/repository to force a fresh clone of your tap.
Conflicts with core formulae: If your formula conflicts with a core formula, consider renaming it or making it keg-only.

Casks

Casks can also be installed from a tap. Casks can be included in taps with formulae, or in a tap with just casks. Place any cask files you wish to make available in a Casks directory at the top level of your tap.

See homebrew/cask for an example of a tap with a Casks subdirectory.

Naming

Unlike formulae, casks must have globally unique names to avoid clashes. This can be achieved by e.g. prepending the cask name with your GitHub username: username-formula-name.

External commands

You can provide your tap users with custom brew commands by adding them in a cmd subdirectory. Read more on external commands.

See Homebrew/test-bot for an example of a tap with external commands.

Upstream taps

Some upstream software providers like to package their software in their own Homebrew tap. When their software is eligible for Homebrew/homebrew-core we prefer to maintain software there for ease of updates, improved discoverability and use of tools such as formulae.brew.sh.

We are not willing to remove software packaged in Homebrew/homebrew-core in favour of an upstream tap. We are not willing to instruct users of our formulae to use an upstream tap instead. If upstream projects have issues with how Homebrew packages your software: please file issues (or, ideally, pull requests) to address these problems.

There’s an increasing desire in commercial open source about “maintaining control” e.g. defining exactly what binaries are shipping to users. Not supporting users (or even software distributions) to build-from-source is antithetical to the values of open source. If you think Homebrew’s perspective is annoying on this: try and see how Debian responds to requests to ship your binaries.