Is it possible to install and update links in one command?

[black-sliver]

Output of brew config

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Output of brew doctor

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Description of issue

Hello,

this question is kind of specific to brew on Github-hosted action runners on macos:

When installing a different version of OpenSSL (in our case OpenSSL@3.5) in CI, we get a warning Warning: openssl@3.5 was installed but not linked because openssl@3 is already linked. We then run brew link --overwrite openssl@3.5 and everything works as expected, however it will leave the Warnings in the Annotations section of the run.

Is there a way to do those two things in one step to avoid the warning altogether?
I tried adding --overwrite to brew install but that did not change the warning.

[SMillerDev]

You can brew unlink openssl@3 && brew install openssl@3.5

[black-sliver]

Sadly that does not solve the problem. It now produces this warning instead:

Warning: openssl@3.5 was installed but not linked because openssl@3 is already installed.

("because openssl@3 is already installed" instead of "[...] already linked")

[cho-m]

An alternative is to use brew bundle, which records link information. If you check in a Brewfile (can create one with brew bundle dump), then brew bundle should install and link everything without warnings.

Example output running in a fresh Linux container with manual Brewfile using one formula with openssl@3 dependency:

$ printf 'brew "libssh2"\nbrew "openssl@3.5", link: true\n' > Brewfile

$ cat Brewfile
brew "libssh2"
brew "openssl@3.5", link: true

$ brew list

$ brew bundle
==> Downloading Homebrew API data
✔︎ JSON API packages.arm64_linux.jws.json                                   Downloaded   15.4MB/ 15.4MB
Installing libssh2
Installing openssl@3.5
`brew bundle` complete! 2 Brewfile dependencies now installed.

$ brew list
==> Formulae
ca-certificates  libssh2  openssl@3  openssl@3.5  zlib-ng-compat

$ ls -l $(which openssl)
lrwxrwxrwx 1 linuxbrew linuxbrew 39 Sep 15 22:10 /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/openssl -> ../Cellar/openssl@3.5/3.5.8/bin/openssl

[black-sliver]

This looks somewhat promising, but I get to yet another failure mode: GitHub action runner seems to have OpenSSL1.1 installed as well.

$ brew bundle --file=macosx/dev-Brewfile
Fetching coreutils, automake, meson, sdl2, sdl2_ttf, sdl2_image, openssl@3.5, googletest
Installing coreutils
Installing meson
Using libtool
Installing sdl2
Using autoconf
Installing sdl2_ttf
Installing automake
Using jq
Installing sdl2_image
Installing openssl@3.5
Installing googletest
Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/openssl@3/3.6.3... 6565 symlinks removed.
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/openssl@3.5/3.5.7... 
Error: Could not symlink bin/openssl
Target /usr/local/bin/openssl
is a symlink belonging to openssl@1.1. You can unlink it:
  brew unlink openssl@1.1

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
  brew link --overwrite openssl@3.5

To list all files that would be deleted:
  brew link --overwrite openssl@3.5 --dry-run

Installing openssl@3.5 has failed!
`brew bundle` failed! 1 Brewfile dependency failed to install
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

I am guessing link --overwrite solved both issues (openssl@3.0 as well as 1.1), but trying to unlink @1.1 does nothing:

Unlinking /opt/homebrew/Cellar/openssl@1.1/1.1.1w... 0 symlinks removed.

Also trying to uninstall @1.1 does not work:

Error: No available formula with the name "openssl@1.1". Did you mean openssl@3.5, openssl@3.0, openssl@4 or openssl@3?

So I don't think bundle --cleanup --force would fix that either.

[cho-m]

GitHub runner's OpenSSL 1.1 is pretty much out of Homebrew's control since it won't be tracked by JSON API. That is manually set up by GitHub¹

Not sure if it works, but you can try brew "openssl@3.5", link: :overwrite

• Ref: https://docs.brew.sh/Brew-Bundle-and-Brewfile#advanced-brewfiles

Footnotes

1. https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/macos/scripts/build/install-openssl.sh ↩

[black-sliver]

Thank you, that did the trick :)

The link: :overwrite is easy to miss, and yeah, I am aware that my problem / question is very specific to GitHub (action runner-images). Brewfile is a lot nicer for CI than specifying the command(s) by hand, so I am glad it works.