zerobrew¶

ZeroBrew (https://github.com/lucasgelfond/zerobrew) is a fast, Homebrew-compatible package manager written in Rust, reusing Homebrew’s formula ecosystem but storing packages in a content-addressable store at /opt/zerobrew.

ZeroBrew has no search command: use brew search or browse the Homebrew formula repository instead.

The >=0.3.0 floor is where zb upgrade landed; zb outdated and its --json output shipped earlier, in 0.2.0.

Home page: https://github.com/lucasgelfond/zerobrew
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/zerobrew.toml
Version requirement: >=0.3.0

Platforms¶

🐧 Linux
🍎 macOS

Operations¶

Operation	Supported
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`search`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`
`cleanup`

Ecosystem¶

Accepted purl types: pkg:zerobrew

Usage¶

$ mpm --zerobrew installed
$ mpm --zerobrew upgrade --all
$ mpm install pkg:zerobrew/hello
$ mpm --dry-run --zerobrew upgrade --all

Every example above accepts --dry-run, which simulates the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Deselect the manager for a single run with --no-zerobrew, disable it from your configuration, or tune its invocation attributes with per-manager overrides.

Command line¶

CLI names, in lookup order: zb
Extra CLI search paths: /opt/zerobrew/bin
Environment forced on each call:
- NO_COLOR=1

The version is probed by running:

$ zb --version
zb 0.3.0

and extracted with:

r"zb\s+(?P<version>\S+)"

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations needs root.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of zerobrew’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the bundled definition: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know zerobrew well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ zb list
jq 1.7.1
wget 1.24.5

$ zb outdated --json
[
  {
    "name": "jq",
    "installed_versions": [
      "1.7.1"
    ],
    "current_version": "1.7.2"
  }
]