formula installed by an alias are re-created every run

[indirect]

The homebrew formula "jsl" is aliased to the name "jslint". With this manifest:

package { 'jslint': }

Every single run of boxen tries to install jslint again, like so:

Debug: Executing 'brew boxen-latest jslint'
Debug: Executing 'brew info jslint'
Debug: Executing 'brew boxen-install jslint'
Notice: /Stage[main]/People::Indirect/Package[jslint]/ensure: created

Homebrew is actually smart enough to not reinstall the formula that is already installed. It would be nice if the Homebrew provider was at least that smart!

[wfarr]

I think this would be nice to fix.

My preliminary guesses would be something in

  def self.available?(name, version)
    version = nil if unversioned? version
    File.exist? File.join [home, "Cellar", simplify(name), version].compact
  end

Detecting these is somewhat hard. It would actually be really ideal for Homebrew to take a virtual package-like approach here and when an aliased package is installed to create a cellar dir for that alias that symlinks to the appropriate package.

[jacobbednarz]

@indirect is this still a thing on the latest versions?

[jacobbednarz]

I found Homebrew/brew#1520 which suggests the --list option now handles this behaviour correctly so we might be able to address this.