zerobrew

zerobrew is a package manager client for the Homebrew ecosystem on macOS and Linux, applying a uv-style architecture to Homebrew packages. It uses Homebrew's formula definitions (homebrew-core), pre-built bottles, and package metadata, but replaces the install path with its own client, invoked as zb. It also falls back to source builds using Homebrew's Ruby DSL when no bottle is available.

The main differences from Homebrew are content-addressable storage for deduplication and APFS clonefiles for copying without data duplication. The README's benchmark of 98 packages on an M3 Pro MacBook showed a 3.0x overall speedup on cold installs and 4.5x on warm installs, with a median of 2.7x cold and 5.7x warm. Some packages showed little gain or were slower, such as llvm (1.1x cold) and go (0.85x cold). The benchmark can be reproduced with just bench --full results/.

The command set covers zb install, zb uninstall, zb outdated, zb upgrade, zb reset, and zb gc for garbage-collecting unused store entries. zb bundle installs from a Brewfile, and zb bundle dump exports installed packages to one. zbx runs a package without linking it, for example zbx jq --version. The project is labeled experimental, and the authors recommend running it alongside Homebrew rather than replacing it. It suits developers who install many Homebrew formulas and want faster installs.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install zerobrewhq/zerobrew/zerobrew

# via Install script
curl -fsSL https://zerobrew.rs/install | bash