Hook cask into homebrew commands?

[muescha]

(as follow up from #38)

if it is so close to homebrew, why a additional 'cask' command?
it would be better if it just extends the normal workflow

just now i need to know if i want to install something it is a normal homebrew formula or it is a cask formula.

i think it should hook into the homebrew commands and then i can access all (homebrew and cask) from homebrew * commands

[phinze]

Yeah I've definitely thought along these lines too. It'd definitely be more convenient to not have to think about an additional interface and have casks "just work". Right now because we're implemented as a homebrew external command, the extra arg is necessary by definition. If you read their wiki page on external commands you'll see.

I'd like to accomplish this, but I think we should be careful not to naively jack into or monkey-patch homebrew's interfaces. That will make for difficult maintenance as homebrew changes. If we can figure out a strategy to sneak our way into a consistent interface without a brittle implementation to support it, I'm all for it.

Going to leave this open to track ideas and attempts for this.

[muescha]

maybe the homebrew team offer a open api to plug into their system to offer specialized installers (maybe also other types of installers beside cask come on there)

[passcod]

I'm researching a proposal to maybe make this get into @mxcl / brew2 somehow.

[vitorgalvao]

Just a thought, but I actually kind of like the cask command in certain situations, being those the duplicates we have with homebrew (macvim, chicken, avidemux). I like the idea of immediately knowing if I’m going to compile a bunch of apps or just get their binaries. It also makes for immediate understanding that “ok, these ones will go into /usr/local/, and these ones into /opt/homebrew-cask/”.

We should be able to account for that and act accordingly, though, I’m only pointing out an example of when I see this separation as being a good, clearer distinction to have.

[phinze]

Not much movement on this in a long time, so I'm going to go ahead and close it.

I'm finding myself much more in agreement with @vitorgalvao's last comment - that the distinction is helpful for clarity.

If we get more interest in this idea we can always reopen. 🚪