Thoughts on ways to make website contributions easier

[runofthemill]

Output of brew config

╰─❯ brew config
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.6.18-27-geade0c3
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: eade0c3229730e1e49874ad54d329a1a4cb7f5e0
Last commit: 26 hours ago
Branch: main
Core tap HEAD: 8f3b05dd8423e30c6e5a80d613379b6cb2e12b25
Core tap last commit: 16 hours ago
Core tap JSON: 23 Oct 01:54 UTC
Core cask tap HEAD: af15e61942825c5adde0fb29e22b4db3febe4ef4
Core cask tap last commit: 15 hours ago
Core cask tap JSON: 23 Oct 01:54 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_EDITOR: nano
HOMEBREW_FORBID_PACKAGES_FROM_PATHS: set
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 10
HOMEBREW_SORBET_RUNTIME: set
Homebrew Ruby: 3.4.5 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.4.5/bin/ruby
CPU: deca-core 64-bit arm_firestorm_icestorm
Clang: 17.0.0 build 1700
Git: 2.51.1 => /opt/homebrew/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.6.1-arm64
CLT: 16.4.0.0.1.1747106510
Xcode: 26.0.1
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

╰─❯ brew doctor
Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

Warning: Some installed casks are deprecated or disabled.
You should find replacements for the following casks:
  qlcolorcode
  qlmarkdown
  quicklook-json
  webpquicklook

Description of issue

Yesterday I started down a rabbit hole after noticing various quicklook plugins I have installed are deprecated.

My first thought was to figure out why they were deprecated, which led me to Homebrew/homebrew-cask@45609aa#commitcomment-167206256, which linked to Homebrew/brew#20732. Ah, makes sense! My next thought was to figure out if there were replacements available, so I tried brew search --desc 'quicklook' which returned a bunch of results - great! But it didn't surface whether they were deprecated or not...which led me to think, I wonder if there's a way to filter on deprecations. Eventually I found my way to https://docs.brew.sh/Querying-Brew, which seems tenable, but I also remembered https://formulae.brew.sh/ and noticed casks/formulae show an icon indicating if they're disabled/deprecated.

"Maybe there's some UX improvements I could contribute to be able to easily filter out deprecated casks on the website," I thought, and so I started down the road of cloning the repo to work on it locally. As mentioned in Homebrew/formulae.brew.sh#1765 (comment), rake generate doesn't work OOTB, and even after getting it working, I ran into issues with Jekyll's livereload and speed (80+ seconds for initial compilation), adding new CSS (ended up inlining <style> tags after being unable to figure out extending the remote theme SASS), and a handful of other rough edges along the way.

All this is to say...I'd love to make some contributions to improve the experience when working on either brew.sh or formulae.brew.sh, but I wanted to get a sense of what would be considered before opening any issues or PRs.

• Would a different SSG be considered if it improved the DX for contributors (theoretically encouraging more folks to contribute)?
• Would refactoring the remote theme to make extending it easier be considered?
• Would adding in jQuery Datatables to https://formulae.brew.sh/[formula|cask|cask-font]/ be considered?
• Any concerns with opening an issue/PR to work around contributors not having HOMEBREW_INFLUXDB_TOKEN available locally?

[p-linnane]

Would a different SSG be considered if it improved the DX for contributors (theoretically encouraging more folks to contribute)?

No. We use Jekyll because we're Rubyists running on GitHub Pages.

Would refactoring the remote theme to make extending it easier be considered?

Possibly but you'd need to elaborate on what that entails and how it would benefit the project.

Would adding in jQuery Datatables to https://formulae.brew.sh/[formula|cask|cask-font]/ be considered?

No. The site is simple by design, which makes maintenance relatively low. We're not looking to make a bunch of changes.

Any concerns with opening an issue/PR to work around contributors not having HOMEBREW_INFLUXDB_TOKEN available locally?

If you're willing to open a PR that works for this, feel free.