Find binary name of formulae

[quackduck]

In short: Is there a way to get the name of the binary a formula installs?

Hello! I'm writing a program that does what command-not-found (on Ubuntu) does but for macOS.

On most Linux distros, when a command is not found, a helpful message showing what package manager commands can be run to install it are shown. This is not available in macOS, presumably because it lacks a default package manager. Most developers however use (the fantastic) Homebrew.

For this reason, I made a program that is triggered when a command is not found and looks for Homebrew formulae matching the name of the command. It does this by simply making a list of the names of all the Ruby scripts (found in /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core/Formula/).

However, there is one shortcoming. The program relies on formulae names, and not the names of the binaries they install. I was not able to find any way to get the binary name (except the inefficient way of searching for bin.install within the files). Is there a way to do this?

[SMillerDev]

There isn't and even bin.install won't help you since that is only used if upstream doesn't provide a makefile or something similar to move the files to bin

[SMillerDev]

There will be symlinks from #{prefix}/bin to #{cellar}/bin

[quackduck]

Wait so the makefile has to install the symlinks? Who's making the symlinks here? When you're using bin.install, Homebrew's making the symlinks. In makefiles, who?

[SMillerDev]

bin.install doesn't create symlinks. It just moves files to the bin directory of the Cellar. Anything that is there will then be symlinked by brew to the general bin as part of the install process.

[quackduck]

Ah okay. What about the makefile scenario?

[SMillerDev]

In that case make installs them into the Cellar and brew links the Cellar as it always would.

[jonchang]

It sounds like you're looking for https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-command-not-found