I'm trying out Homebrew, but I can't seem to figure out when uninstalling a 'formula', how to recursively remove the dependencies as well. I.e. Macports is:
$ port uninstall --follow-dependencies <portname>
How does this work with Homebrew?
MacOS – How to remove dependencies recursively in Homebrew
command linehomebrewmacosopen source
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Best Answer
A simple way to solve the problem of accumulating dependencies of deinstalled things is to periodically run brew leaves and compare it against a list of wanted leaves, and recursively remove everything else.
The following works, but of course is not very readable:
1) Show all the leaves minus the ones in your wanted list:
2) Once you have adjusted the list (i.e. added new keepers), get rid of the rest:
This usually has to be called a few times in a row to get them all, and the final call should be followed by a
To beautify a bit, the list of keepers can of course be kept in a file somewhere.