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003-install-bottles-of-arbitrary-versions.md

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Install bottles of arbitrary versions

Introduction

Install bottles without having access to the formula used to create them.

Motivation

The motivation for this feature is to install a collection of bottles of arbitrary versions to repeat a data analysis pipeline. It is one step toward the loftier goal of being able to recreate the environment of a previous installation of Homebrew. See the original feature request and discussion at Homebrew/homebrew-science#1191.

Pouring the bottle (extracting the tarball) is easy enough. Neither the bottle's dependencies nor its post_install are currently stored in the bottle, and the information in the current formula may have changed since the bottle was built. It would be a nice feature of the bottle file format if the bottle itself contained all of the necessary information to install the bottle.

Proposed solution

Store the formula used to build the bottle inside the bottle. It would be necessary to remove the bottle section or the sha256 lines, as it wouldn't be possible to store the sha256 of the bottle inside the bottle, lest the universe implode.

Detailed design

When installing a keg from source, store the names of the dependencies and the versions used to build the keg inside INSTALL_RECEIPT.json. When building a bottle from that keg, store the formula used to build the keg inside the bottle in a file named NAME/VERSION/.bottle/NAME.rb after removing the bottle block or sha256 lines.

Alternatives considered

  1. Store the git SHA1 of the revision of the formula used to build the bottle in the bottle so that the formula can be later extracted with git show.
  2. Store the git hash-object SHA1 of the formula used to build the bottle in the bottle so that the formula can later be extracted with git cat-file blob.
  3. Find the formula in the git log as brew versions did.