Fwd: [HACKERS] Switching to Homebrew as recommended Mac install? / apology

[David Johnston <polobo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Moving from Hackers as well...

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jay Levitt <jay.levitt@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: April 2, 2012 9:02:49 MST
To: David Johnston <polobo@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,  PG Hackers <pgsql-hackers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Switching to Homebrew as recommended Mac install? / apology

Nothing at this point. I was thinking out loud, and at the time was temporarily insa^h^h^hconvinced that the homebrew formula should be the community standard, and thus that I'd have to bring it up to some level of acceptability/review.  I've contributed to the formula in the past, and will continue to do so based on the thoughts everyone's shared here. It doesn't need to be official to be useful, and as David Page said, it's not gonna be listed in the docs no matter what, given the one decision that homebrew makes (/usr/local) that I can't override.

I'm curious if David Page et al. would list the recipie if it contained a disclaimer regarding the security flaws inherent in the underlying location choice and suggesting it only be used for developers and not production?

One reason to do so would be so that people who know and would want to use homebrew would be able to see that, yes, one exists but that there are security implications resulting from its use.  The recipie itself should also provide these warnings and explanations but the community download page could be used as an opportunity to try and teach these people more about security.

It makes no sense to pretend that dangerous things do not exist but rather we should teach about the dangers and try to provide alternatives.

David J.