Deprecate Homebrew/homebrew-command-not-found

[MikeMcQuaid]

This doesn't seem to be used at all nowadays:
https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/brew-command-run/365d/

As an official tap, it has overhead on e.g. RuboCop upgrades and a presence in Homebrew/brew CI, manpage, etc. that no longer seems to be warranted.

If there's enough 👍🏻 to do this: I'll add various odeprecated or odisabled calls to Homebrew/homebrew-command-not-found and archive the repository.

[bevanjkay]

I don't think this would show on the command-run analytics, because it's not invoked directly.
Unless we're looking for the command-not-found-init command, which may not be used as opposed to reading the docs.

In saying that, I've personally never used it.

[MikeMcQuaid]

I don't think this would show on the command-run analytics, because it's not invoked directly.

I guess my thinking is: none of the relevant commands show up in the analytics.

In saying that, I've personally never used it.

This is an added datapoint: from a show of hands at the last Homebrew AGM iirc no maintainers used this.

[carlocab]

This is an added datapoint: from a show of hands at the last Homebrew AGM iirc no maintainers used this.

I remember a few people raising their hands (including me...)

[MikeMcQuaid]

I remember a few people raising their hands (including me...)

@carlocab My bad, maybe it was homebrew-autoupdate people didn't use?

Any idea why there's no results showing up in analytics here? Would you be happy to take on any improvements to e.g. not committing data to repo without PRs?

[carlocab]

@carlocab My bad, maybe it was homebrew-autoupdate people didn't use?

Yes, that one I recall no one raising their hands for.

Any idea why there's no results showing up in analytics here?

No 🥲

Would you be happy to take on any improvements to e.g. not committing data to repo without PRs?

Yep, happy to take on improvements, but I'd like some assistance with continuing maintenance (even if it's just poking me on Slack to fix things).

[MikeMcQuaid]

Any idea why there's no results showing up in analytics here?

No 🥲

@carlocab Which commands do you manually run and when, just so I understand?

Yep, happy to take on improvements, but I'd like some assistance with continuing maintenance (even if it's just poking me on Slack to fix things).

Yup, fair.

Will leave this open for now in case anyone else feels strongly it shouldn't be part of Homebrew.

[cho-m]

Any idea why there's no results showing up in analytics here?

I think we only collect analytics for the new AbstractCommand subclasses?

brew/Library/Homebrew/brew.rb

Lines 88 to 91 in 92adf6a

	cmd_class = Homebrew::AbstractCommand.command(cmd)
	if cmd_class
	command_instance = cmd_class.new
	Utils::Analytics.report_command_run(command_instance)

Homebrew/homebrew-command-not-found (and probably other official tap commands) have not been refactored.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Good catch, thanks @cho-m!

[carlocab]

@carlocab Which commands do you manually run and when, just so I understand?

I rarely run it manually these days. When I do, it's usually to run brew which-formula because I want to know which formula provides a command.

However, I do have it set up as a command-not-found handler, via https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/5e59d21e5465ec0694441f41ff0acf1ddf4de187/plugins/command-not-found.

For example, if I try to run a command that's not available:

❯ ghc
The program 'ghc' can be found in the following formulae:
  * ghc
  * [email protected]
  * [email protected]
  * [email protected]
  * [email protected]
Try: brew install <selected formula>

❯ ldc2
The program 'ldc2' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
  brew install ldc

[razvanazamfirei]

I have used it briefly it in the past, but not in the last 2-ish years.

[Rylan12]

I use this too, but only the which-formula command (which I've aliased to brew which) and not the shell handler part.

However, I don't use it frequently enough that I think it needs to be official. If we deprecate it here, I'll likely keep a personal fork of it around for my personal use

[apainintheneck]

Would it be worth updating the command to the use the new DSL so we can collect stats before deprecating it? That would give us a better idea if people are actually using it. I don't use the command though so personally I'm fine with removing it.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Would it be worth updating the command to the use the new DSL so we can collect stats before deprecating it?

Yes, I think this is the best thing for now.

Going to mark this as draft for now until we've done that.

[reitermarkus]

I'm also using this. And of course, since most of the software I use is already installed by my dotfiles, command-not-found is very rarely actually called. command-not-found-init shouldn't do any network request given it's called when initializing a new terminal like shellenv.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Have opened PRs to gather analytics: Homebrew/homebrew-command-not-found#156 (and others). Closing this until at least 30 days after merge so we can see what usage levels are like.