Why store .keepme in bin/?

[abitrolly]

~ ls -lA .linuxbrew/bin
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 anatoli anatoli 42 Nov  8 14:27 brew -> /home/anatoli/.linuxbrew/Homebrew/bin/brew
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 anatoli anatoli 28 Nov  9 07:01 k9s -> ../Cellar/k9s/0.23.9/bin/k9s
-rw-r--r--. 1 anatoli anatoli  0 Nov  9 07:00 .keepme
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 anatoli anatoli 36 Nov  9 07:01 patchelf -> ../Cellar/patchelf/0.11/bin/patchelf

I don't see why it is needed on Linux. There is a similar question Homebrew/brew#6263 (comment) by @KizzyCode and answers with vague references to shady OS X engineers.

[jonchang]

If this is a problem for you, please consider opening a pull request to fix it.

[gromgit]

Homebrew/brew#6263

[abitrolly]

@Bo98 do you mean that on upgrades macOS erases anything in /usr/local/ it doesn't know about, as well as everything dot directory in in $HOME?

[abitrolly]

@gromgit I mentioned this issue already in original message. What's the point?

[gromgit]

Sorry, cross-eyed from multiple migrations, didn't notice the link in your OP.

My point is that you're probably better off asking the Apple engineers directly, if you absolutely positively must know.

[Bo98]

The macOS installer removes empty directories (or at least used to) in /usr/local and it requires sudo permissions to recreate them. The .keepme file was placed to prevent the directories from being removed and thus not need sudo to recreate them when they are later filled.

brew doesn't have a dot directory in $HOME on macOS. /usr/local on macOS == /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew on Linux.

[abitrolly]

@Bo98 is that macOS installer software from Apple? I expect installers to remove empty directories on uninstall, not just when invoked for some other program. When the installer starts to remove these dirs if not during uninstall of brew itself?

[jonchang]

The pull request you linked refers to the Catalina installer, so this is when upgrading macOS versions.

[abitrolly]

@jonchang thanks for the clarification. It could have have been a brew installer for Catalina. So does it clean up everything unknown in /usr/local and dot dirs in $HOME?

[SMillerDev]

It isn't a brew installer since we don't have installers for specific macOS versions. The macOS installer cleans, or at least used to, unknown empty directories in /usr/local. That's why we put a .keepme file there as instructed by Apple engineers (as mentioned in the issue you linked)

[abitrolly]

@SMillerDev but if the brew is installed, it is located in bin/ directory, right? So it can not be empty.