How To: Overwrite Symlinks in Homebrew Packages

Overwriting Links for Homebrew Package

I’m developing Ansible playbooks for my new dedicated host and learning new Ansible features these days. One of the features required a more recent Ansible version, and that’s how I learned about rewriting symlinks for installed packages in Homebrew.

I’ve confirmed Ansible version:

greys@maverick:~/proj/ansible $ ansible --version
ansible 2.4.2.0
   config file = /Users/greys/Documents/proj/ansible/ansible.cfg
   configured module search path = [u'/Users/greys/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
   ansible python module location = /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ansible
   executable location = /usr/local/bin/ansible
   python version = 2.7.10 (default, Feb 22 2019, 21:55:15) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.37.14)]

… then upgraded the Ansible bottle in Homebrew:

greys@maverick:~/proj/ansible $ brew install ansible

Updating Homebrew…

==> Auto-updated Homebrew!

Updated Homebrew from 37714b5ce to 78d74a8b2.

Updated 2 taps (homebrew/core and homebrew/cask).

==> Updated Formulae

...
==> Deleted Formulae==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/ansible-2.8.4_1.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
 ==> Downloading from https://akamai.bintray.com/93/93eac1e6a31cd36b229f3f66a051840512e198fd0123423d895de87c32ec13c6?gda=exp=1567440871~hmac=6a1d81f750325488002912e069cb58dcb04484e35ba49494b49279dfc2b03c35
################################################################## 100.0%
==> Pouring ansible-2.8.4_1.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
 Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully
 The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local
 Could not symlink bin/ansible
 Target /usr/local/bin/ansible
 already exists. You may want to remove it:
   rm '/usr/local/bin/ansible'

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
   brew link --overwrite ansible

To list all files that would be deleted:
  brew link --overwrite --dry-run ansible
Possible conflicting files are:
 /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-config -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-connection
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-console -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-doc -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-galaxy -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-inventory -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-playbook -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-pull -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 /usr/local/bin/ansible-vault -> /usr/local/bin/ansible
 ==> Summary
 🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/ansible/2.8.4_1: 15,147 files, 194.8MB
 You have new mail in /var/mail/greys

… and then realised Ansible version stayed the same (2.4.2.0) even though installed package was 2.8.4.1…

Overwrite symlinks in Homebrew

Here’s a useful command that re-creates (and overwrites) symlinks from /usr/local/bin directory to the latest version of a specified Homebrew bottle, Ansible in my case:

greys@maverick:~/proj/ansible $ brew link --overwrite ansible
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/ansible/2.8.4_1… 19 symlinks created

Now le’ts check the version of Ansible again, it should show the correct (latest) version:

greys@maverick:~/proj/ansible $ ansible --version
ansible 2.8.4
   config file = /Users/greys/Documents/proj/ansible/ansible.cfg
   configured module search path = ['/Users/greys/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
   ansible python module location = /usr/local/Cellar/ansible/2.8.4_1/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/ansible
   executable location = /usr/local/bin/ansible
   python version = 3.7.4 (default, Jul  9 2019, 18:13:23) [Clang 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.46.4)]

That’s it for now. Enjoy your Ansible experiments!

See Also