How much space will Homebrew take up on my M1 computer?

[rorynl]

Hi,

I'd like to know how many megabytes or gigabytes of space Homebrew takes up on initial install. I can take into account Xcode Command Line Tools separately. If anybody has this info for MacPorts and/or Nix Package Manager, that would be great too.

Unless I'm missing something, this information does not appear to be readily available.

Thanks

[SMillerDev]

After cloning the homebrew/brew repo the system reports that it uses 82MB. That is the most minimal version of the install you could configure (without installing anything).

Most people on macOS will also appreciate being able to install software from the repos though, which are:
homebrew/core: 556MB
homebrew/cask: 354MB

Overall this would take just under 0.4% of the storage of the 256GB MacBook Air.

[carlocab]

You can also use the (currently experimental) HOMEBREW_INSTALL_FROM_API environment variable that will allow you to use Homebrew without having to clone homebrew/core or homebrew/cask.

[bassamsdata]

How can I don HOMEBREW_INSTALL_FROM_API set to true. is there any step by step tutorial. I searched for tutorials but didn't find any.

[kresdjan]

export HOMEBREW_INSTALL_FROM_API=1

https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#default-tap-cloning

[carlocab]

HOMEBREW_INSTALL_FROM_API is now the default. There is no need to set it. You may need to

unset HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_FROM_API

if you have it set.