Homebrew-autoupdate

An easy, convenient way to automatically update Homebrew.

This script will run brew update in the background once every 24 hours (by default) until explicitly told to stop, utilising launchd.

brew upgrade and brew cleanup can also be handled automatically but are optional flags.

Notifications are enabled by default on macOS Big Sur using a new, codesigned AppleScript applet. On older versions of macOS, if you have terminal-notifier installed you can also request desktop notifications when this command runs.

Installing this command

Just brew tap domt4/autoupdate.

Usage

brew autoupdate --start [interval] [--upgrade] [--cleanup] [--enable-notification]:
  Start autoupdating either once every interval hours or once every 24 hours.
  Please note the interval has to be passed in seconds, so 12 hours would be:
    brew autoupdate --start 43200.

  If --upgrade is specified, autoupdate will also upgrade your installed
  formulae. If the Caskroom exists locally Casks will be upgraded as well.

  If --cleanup is specified, autoupdate will also automatically clean
  brew's cache and logs.

  If --enable-notification is specified, autoupdate will send a notification
  when the autoupdate process has finished successfully, if terminal-notifier
  is installed & found. Note that currently a new experimental notifier runs
  automatically on macOS Big Sur, without requiring any external dependencies.

 autoupdate --stop:
  Stop autoupdating, but retain plist & logs.

 autoupdate --delete:
  Cancel the autoupdate, delete the plist and logs.

 autoupdate --status:
  Prints the current status of this tool.

 autoupdate --version:
  Output this tool's current version.

Logs of the performed operations can be found at: ~/Library/Logs/com.github.domt4.homebrew-autoupdate

This Vs brew's built-in autoupdate mechanism

This command mostly exists to ensure Homebrew is updated regardless of whether you invoke brew or not, which is the primary difference from the autoupdate mechanism built into brew, the latter requiring a user to explicitly run any of brew install, brew tap or brew upgrade.

If you run brew commands regularly yourself, you may wish to consider using the built-in autoupdate mechanism, which can be instructed to autoupdate less often or disabled entirely. If you wish to update every 24 hours using the built-in autoupdate mechanism set this in your environment:

export HOMEBREW_AUTO_UPDATE_SECS="86400"

or if you wish to disable the built-in autoupdate mechanism entirely:

export HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE="1"

Please note that Homebrew themselves slightly frown upon people disabling the built-in autoupdate mechanism.

TO-DO (PRs Welcome)

• Complete broader testing and roll-out of new, experimental notification support added in 6365cc020 that doesn't require or use any external dependencies, using only an Applescript applet. Related Issue

• Decide what to do about Cask upgrades which require sudo to succeed and currently just hang when that situation is encountered, unless using SUDO_ASKPASS. Related Issue

License

Code is under the BSD 2 Clause (NetBSD) license.