Uninstall brew package and dependencies

Uninstall_brew_package_and_dependencies.md

Uninstall brew package and dependencies

Remove package's dependencies (does not remove package):

brew deps [FORMULA] | xargs brew remove --ignore-dependencies

Remove package:

brew remove [FORMULA]

Reinstall missing libraries:

brew missing | cut -d: -f2 | sort | uniq | xargs brew install

@mrgloom , brew deps will show what kegs a formula depends on; the uninstall error message is telling you what other formula depend on the one you're trying to uninstall (or "reverse-dependencies"). you can show these with:

$ brew uses --installed [FORMULA]

Hey, so depending on the FORMULA that you're uninstalling this command can be quite dangerous

brew deps [FORMULA] | xargs brew remove --ignore-dependencies

If the formula has a lot of dependencies that are required for other packages, stuff get broken :(

This problem is more robustly solved by something like brew rmtree

Just a small suggestion of an improvement on that last line:

brew missing | cut -d: -f2 | tr ' ' "\n" | sort | uniq | xargs brew install

So that duplicates are really removed.

Original source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41748156/1521064

brew autoremove

brew autoremove

It works!

brew uninstall [formula] ; brew autoremove

FTW