homebrew-hops

Table of contents

• Installation
• Quick start
• Dependencies
• Authentication
• Environment
  • Hopsfile
  • Brewfile
• Commands
  • init
  • sync

Hops allows you to sync Homebrew across multiple machines by using a Gist backend to store the state of your taps, formulae, casks, and vscode extensions. Use it to keep your work and home machines in sync, or to quickly get a new machine up and running.

Installation

Homebrew will pull the latest version of hops every time you run brew update. To install:

brew tap nallenscott/hops

Quick start

1. To sync a machine with the backend, run init with a personal access token, and then sync.

# hostname: home_machine
$ brew tap nallenscott/hops
$ brew hops init --token ghp_...
$ brew hops sync

2. To sync Homebrew with another machine, run sync with the hostname of the target machine.

# hostname: work_machine
$ brew tap nallenscott/hops
$ brew hops init --token ghp_... --gist aad9...
$ brew hops sync --host home_machine

Dependencies

Hops use gh to interact with the GitHub API. Hops will check for it and prompt you to install it if it's missing.

Authentication

Hops uses a personal access token to authenticate with GitHub. You can create a new token here. The minimum required scopes are: repo, read:org, gist. The repo and read:org scopes are required by gh.

Environment

Hopsfile

The first time init is run, hops will create a new Gist named .hops and store the Gist ID in ~/.hops/Hopsfile. The Gist URL will be printed to the console after init completes.

~/.hops/backend.env

GITHUB_TOKEN="ghp_5bbd682cfbbe427297e1360fa9fd02f2einA"
GIST_ID="aad9e4b592a34fefb29515475244edfe"
GIST_URL="https://gist.github.com/foob/aad9e4b592a34fefb29515475244edfe"

Brewfile

Running sync will update the Brewfile with the currently installed taps, formulae, casks, and vscode extensions. The local copy is stored in ~/.hops/Brewfile. It's also uploaded to the Gist backend using the hostname of the machine as the filename.

~/.hops/Brewfile

tap "aws/tap"
tap "cargo-lambda/cargo-lambda"
brew "sqlite"
brew "python@3.11"
cask "discord"
cask "docker"
vscode "golang.go"
vscode "hashicorp.hcl"

Commands

init

Creates a new Gist and stores the Gist ID and GitHub token in ~/hops/Hopsfile.

$ hops init [options]

Options

Name	Description
--token	A personal access token with gist permissions [1]
--gist	The ID of an existing Gist to use as the backend

[1] Requires the repo, read:org, and gist scopes.

sync

Updates the Brewfile with the currently installed taps, formulae, casks, and vscode extensions.

$ hops sync [options]

Options

Name	Description
--host	The hostname of another machine to sync with [1]

[1] The other machine must have the same Gist backend.