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Homebrew: fix our tap now, plan for an official formula or cask #202
Description
We want brew install wally to work for anyone, with no tap or configure step. Right now it doesn't work even from our own tap, and wally isn't eligible for homebrew-core as it's built.
Our tap is broken today
Formula/wally.rb on main still has a placeholder sha256 (61 zeros, not even a valid length), so brew install from the tap fails its hash check. release.yml builds a correctly stamped formula as the wally-homebrew-formula workflow artifact, but nothing copies it back to the branch Homebrew reads.
docs/RELEASING.md also says the tap location was never decided: install.sh taps this repo, while update-tap.sh was written for a separate homebrew-tap repo.
Fix:
- Pick one tap. A separate
RunanywhereAI/homebrew-wallyrepo givesbrew install runanywhereai/wally/wallywith nobrew tapstep. - Have the release push the stamped formula to that tap, or open a PR against it, instead of only uploading an artifact.
- Remove
Formula/wally-beta.rb, or stamp it too. It points at a 0.4.0 beta and also has a placeholder sha256.
homebrew-core: what passes and what doesn't
Checked against Homebrew's current docs (Acceptable Formulae, Package Acceptance Policy, Formula Cookbook, Acceptable Casks, License Guidelines).
| Requirement | Status |
|---|---|
| Notability (225 stars for self-submission) | Pass, 1,565 stars |
| Stable tagged releases | Pass |
| wally's own licence (MIT) | Pass |
| Self-update off under brew | Pass, wally update defers to brew upgrade |
| Builds from source | Fail. The C++ desktop kit is a prebuilt binary downloaded from a GitHub release |
| No network during install | Fail. Configure downloads the kit and the runanywhere-swift package |
| No bundled copies of existing formulae | Fail. The kit bundles llama.cpp, ONNX Runtime and MLX, and all three are in homebrew-core (llama.cpp's formula refuses a bundled ggml) |
| Kit licence | Unclear. The RunAnywhere License needs a commercial licence for companies over $1M funding or revenue. Core forbids "proprietary" dependencies, and the docs don't say whether a licence like this one counts |
| Telemetry | Unclear. Development mode sends anonymous telemetry by default and users have no flag or env var to turn it off. Homebrew has no written rule, but formula tests must run offline and other formulae turn telemetry off in test do |
| Console URLs at configure time | Unclear. WALLY_CONSOLE_OPTIONAL=1 builds without them, but then wally login needs WALLY_CONSOLE_URL set at runtime |
Getting into core would mean building against Homebrew's own llama.cpp, onnxruntime and mlx, upstreaming a sherpa-onnx formula (there isn't one), building the Swift MLX host from a source resource, and settling the licence question. All of that is SDK-level work, not a CLI change.
Cask route
homebrew-cask accepts binary-only software, but it requires a Developer ID signed and notarised binary that passes Gatekeeper with no bypass. Our macOS archive is ad-hoc signed, and notarisation is still an open launch gate in docs/RELEASING.md. Acceptance isn't guaranteed either: the cask docs say open-source CLI tools normally belong in core, and a core rejection doesn't make something eligible for cask.
Suggested order
- Fix the tap (above). It unblocks one-line installs now.
- Add a user-facing telemetry opt-out (env var such as
DO_NOT_TRACK, plus a flag). It's needed for any official route. - Developer ID signing and notarisation in
release.yml, then try a cask. - Decide on the kit licence and a source build before attempting homebrew-core.
Activity
Siddhesh2377 commentedon Oct 15, 2026
@shubhammalhotra28