Where can I find the installed package path via brew

Question

I installed some packages via brew. But I can not find where they are.

I can not get access by typing hping on terminal

% brew install hping
(git)-[master] 
Warning: hping-3.20051105 already installed

My hping is installed in /usr/local/Cellar/hping/3.20051105/sbin/hping — Mateusz Szlosek, Sep 16 '14 at 07:55
I had the same problem with daemonize, this answer helped me understand that daemonize is installed in /usr/local/sbin that was not in the PATH — jakub.g, Feb 28 '17 at 16:32

score 297 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 16 '14 at 13:41

297

Use the following to show the installation path of a package:

brew info hping

Example output:

pcre: stable 8.35 (bottled)
http://www.pcre.org/
/usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.35 (146 files, 5.8M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/pcre.rb
==> Options
--universal
    Build a universal binary

answered Sep 16 '14 at 13:41

nyi

3,101

21

Is it possible to get only path? In my case I want to use clang from llvm and after "brew install llvm" clang is still apple's, but one from llvm binaries is what I need. – okutane Sep 09 '16 at 06:51
1

BTW brew doctor might help you understand issues as well. – jakub.g Feb 28 '17 at 16:34
6

@okutane You would need to assemble the path yourself. As a crude example, you could do echo "$(brew --cellar llvm)/$(brew list --versions llvm | tr ' ' '\n' | tail -1)/bin/clang" – nburr Mar 07 '18 at 16:37
6

Depending on your specific needs, brew --prefix hping (from @capripot's answer) may do the trick. – waldyrious Jan 04 '19 at 17:59
Usually brew stores symlinks to the latest bin in /usr/local/bin/ – Mint Aug 08 '21 at 08:20
2

^ although note that on M1 Macs, they live in /opt/homebrew/bin/ – Leland May 16 '22 at 22:41

Capripot · Answer 2 · 2019-08-29T06:26:56.023

59

To figure out where your formula is installed, do brew --prefix hping

You can also relink your hping binary by doing brew unlink hping && brew link hping

Also maybe your $PATH is not well defined. Does the list given by echo $PATH contains the result given by echo $(brew --prefix)'/bin:'$(brew --prefix)'/sbin'? This path should be toward the beginning of the list to be prioritized over system binaries, surely before /usr/bin.

To do so, you can add this at the end of your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

export PATH=$(brew --prefix)/bin:$(brew --prefix)/sbin:$PATH

As a result, after opening a new terminal or doing source ~/.zshrc, you'll be able to echo your correct path as:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

edited Aug 29 '19 at 06:26

answered Feb 10 '16 at 16:29

Capripot

719

5

Thank you, brew --prefix <command> was exactly what I needed. – waldyrious Jan 04 '19 at 17:57
This does not work for "cask" packages. – Pointy Oct 08 '22 at 13:31
1

I used the hint here to resolve a dependency against Postgres on an M1 w/Monterey. This, plus brew info package as mentioned above, and this FAQ, cleared things up for me: https://docs.brew.sh/FAQ#why-is-the-default-installation-prefix-opthomebrew-on-apple-silicon – learning2learn Jan 24 '23 at 08:38

score 40 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 02 '23 at 19:26

40

brew --cellar prints the directory which is the default location on macOS. You'll see sub-directories in there for all your installed formulae.

edited Apr 02 '23 at 19:26

nohillside

100,768

answered Sep 16 '14 at 12:11

Papa Stanley

501

score 11 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 11 '17 at 11:40

11

Try this command

brew --cellar <FORMULA>

e.g.

brew --cellar hping

edited Aug 11 '17 at 11:40

nohillside

100,768

answered Aug 11 '17 at 09:26

user2917630

211

1

Alternatively, brew --prefix hping may be helpful as well. – waldyrious Jan 04 '19 at 17:59
1

Thanks heaps. This doesn't seem to work for casks. Any idea? – Meligy Feb 23 '21 at 02:17

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 16 '14 at 10:35

10

Normally, homebrew installs packages into /usr/local/bin. So you need to check that your PATH contains that directory, like this:

echo $PATH

Also, try running

brew doctor

to make sure your setup is correct. If /usr/local/bin is not in your PATH, you need to edit ~/.profile and add a line like this:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

Then start a new Terminal (in order to re-read your login profile) and try again.

If all that fails, it must be installed somewhere else. You can search for it by running a command like this:

sudo find / -name hping -type f

answered Sep 16 '14 at 10:35

Mark Setchell

447

2

These are symlinks. The actual packages are in /usr/local/Cellar as @PapaStanley points out. – Steve Aug 18 '15 at 01:06
@Steve why is it then that when i do ls -ld /usr/local/bin it looks like a regular directory? – barlop Aug 10 '19 at 15:09
@barlop Because not /usr/local/bin is a symlink, the files inside that directory placed there by Brew are symlinks. – Mecki Jan 07 '22 at 01:33

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 21 '22 at 07:34

Inspired by @RubenLaguna, I came up with this to get the full path to the installed version of the default formula.

As shown in previous answers, to get the install path for a formula:

brew --prefix nmap

Returns a symlink to the install path:

/usr/local/opt/nmap

To expand the full path:

readlink -f $(brew --prefix nmap)

/usr/local/Cellar/nmap/7.92

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 09 '19 at 19:24

4

To find your base installation directory for Homebrew, use one of the following commands:

brew --prefix
brew --cellar

The latter specifically returns the path of your Cellar folder.

answered Sep 09 '19 at 19:24

Adam Erickson

141

RubenLaguna · Answer 8 · 2021-12-06T09:23:42.067

3

I couldn't find any direct CLI option in brew to get the full path to the currently installed version of a formula but this would work as long as you are using bash:

echo $(brew --cellar asciidoctor)/$(brew info --json asciidoctor | jq -r '.[0].installed[0].version')
# /usr/local/Cellar/asciidoctor/1.5.8

edited Dec 06 '21 at 09:23

answered Mar 28 '19 at 10:25

RubenLaguna

343

This is not entirely correct if you have more than one version installed in the Cellar. – shadowbq Feb 08 '20 at 01:37

score 1 · Answer 9 · edited Dec 24 '15 at 10:51

1

I recommend adding the following line to your ~/.bash_profile (or the equivalent configuration file if you are using a different shell):

export HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS="--appdir=/Applications"

edited Dec 24 '15 at 10:51

ssc

109

answered Aug 26 '15 at 16:03

Shoaib Ud-Din

119

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 03 '15 at 23:48

hping requires root privileges to run.

You probably need to add /usr/local/sbin to your PATH.

When I ran brew doctor:

Warning: Homebrew's sbin was not found in your PATH but you have installed
formulae that put executables in /usr/local/sbin.
Consider setting the PATH for example like so
    echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jan 01 '21 at 21:10

For anyone that lands here after googling, and/or for anyone who wants a list of packages that are installed as keg only, you can get this info from the brew JSON output.

List all installed packages:

brew info --json --installed

List keg only packages (jq tool required):

brew info --json --installed | jq -r '.[] | select(.keg_only == true) | .name'

List the path for keg only packages (again, jq tool required):

brew info --json --installed | jq -r '.[] | select(.keg_only == true) | .name' | while read name; do brew --prefix $name; done

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Nov 16 '22 at 07:42

The real path to the directory containing versioned directories of the formula

brew --cellar <FORMULA>

Example

% brew --cellar spdlog            
/usr/local/Cellar/spdlog

Symlink to the current version of the formula (shorter)

This is what you want most of the time.

brew --prefix <FORMULA>

Example

% brew --prefix spdlog         
/usr/local/opt/spdlog

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Apr 19 '17 at 18:26

I installed some packages via brew. But I can not find where they are.

It seems that homebrew requires one to be explicit with things. Fortunately, a bit of escaping using brew --prefix can make this a no-brainer, for those who need to find the path for the pkg-config utility, e.g.

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=`brew --prefix hping`/lib/pkgconfig/ pkg-config --cflags hping

(Except this isn't going to work anyway, because it seems hping doesn't come with hping.pc .. although, in the case where package maintainers do put .pc files, this trick can be useful.)

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jan 14 '19 at 11:47

If someone looking for real path of package:

In my case brew --cellar opencv3 gives /usr/local/Cellar/opencv

But find /usr/local/Cellar/ -type d -name "*opencv*" -maxdepth 1 gives

/usr/local/Cellar//opencv3(which is /usr/local/Cellar/opencv3 actually).

Headers:

/usr/local/Cellar/opencv3/3.4.1_1/include/

Libs:

/usr/local/Cellar/opencv3/3.4.1_1/lib/

F566 · Answer 15 · 2021-10-11T10:24:34.553

-1

brew list opencv

Output like this:

/usr/local/Cellar/opencv/4.5.2_4/bin/opencv_annotation
/usr/local/Cellar/opencv/4.5.2_4/bin/opencv_interactive-calibration
/usr/local/Cellar/opencv/4.5.2_4/bin/opencv_model_diagnostics
...

My brew version:

brew -v
> Homebrew 3.2.1

edited Oct 11 '21 at 10:24

answered Jul 07 '21 at 03:36

F566

101
1

What does this do? – nohillside Jul 07 '21 at 05:09
@nohillside List all installed formulae and casks. If formula is provided, summarise the paths within its current keg. If cask is provided, list its artifacts. – F566 Oct 11 '21 at 10:26

Where can I find the installed package path via brew

15 Answers15

The real path to the directory containing versioned directories of the formula

Example

Symlink to the current version of the formula (shorter)

Example