I disagree with the characterization of Homebrew as a “virtual environment”. It installs binaries and libraries in its own directory and by default adds those directories to your PATH. This makes them first-class entities on macOS. Unlike with WSL, there is no secondary kernel and no hypervisor. Everything runs natively within the macOS environment. There’s no bridge, no virtualizer, not even sandboxing with Homebrew or MacPorts. Homebrew and MacPorts do not install “Linux” software; they install Mac software.
As a real-world example, I can install newer versions of standard tools like openssl and kerberos5 via MacPorts or Homebrew, and native Mac apps that rely on those pick them up seamlessly. I don’t think that is realistic with WSL, if even possible.
I haven’t re-evaluated a lot of development stuff since the release of WSL2, so perhaps things are smoother now, but in WSL1 I found there to be a big disconnect between e.g. a Windows-native installation of Spyder and a WSL-based Python environment. If there is a way to set that up, rather than installing Spyder within WSL and wrestling with X11 to run it as a second-class GUI, I’d love to hear it.
I appreciate your well-reasoned arguments.
I disagree with the characterization of Homebrew as a “virtual environment”. It installs binaries and libraries in its own directory and by default adds those directories to your PATH. This makes them first-class entities on macOS. Unlike with WSL, there is no secondary kernel and no hypervisor. Everything runs natively within the macOS environment. There’s no bridge, no virtualizer, not even sandboxing with Homebrew or MacPorts. Homebrew and MacPorts do not install “Linux” software; they install Mac software.
As a real-world example, I can install newer versions of standard tools like openssl and kerberos5 via MacPorts or Homebrew, and native Mac apps that rely on those pick them up seamlessly. I don’t think that is realistic with WSL, if even possible.
I haven’t re-evaluated a lot of development stuff since the release of WSL2, so perhaps things are smoother now, but in WSL1 I found there to be a big disconnect between e.g. a Windows-native installation of Spyder and a WSL-based Python environment. If there is a way to set that up, rather than installing Spyder within WSL and wrestling with X11 to run it as a second-class GUI, I’d love to hear it.