How can I get more information about the brew formula before installing?

Question

I know I can do something like

## brew info FORMULA_NAME brew info wgetpaste 

Exit

 wgetpaste: stable 2.20 http://wgetpaste.zlin.dk/ Not installed https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/wgetpaste.rb 

I can then follow the URL to get the formula information before installation. Do we have any way to get this information on the command line using brew?

Answer 1

Nope. Homebrew intentionally allows websites to serve as package documentation rather than containing a separate copy.

You can brew home <formula> to launch the browser from the command line or brew edit <formula> to learn how to set the formula in the editor yourself.

Answer 2

You can get a one-line textual description of the package with:

 brew desc FORMULA-NAME 

For example, "brew desc terminator" returns:

terminator: several terminals in one window

Answer 3

try it:

 brew cask info [package] 

Answer 4

I use brew [cask] cat [...] to see the exact formula (without having to edit it as other answers suggest). It shows what is loading, where, with what checksum, what other formulas / barrels it depends on, etc. Here is an example:

 $ brew cask cat java cask 'java' do version '12.0.2,10:e482c34c86bd4bf8b56c0b35558996b9' sha256 '675a739ab89b28a8db89510f87cb2ec3206ec6662fb4b4996264c16c72cdd2a1' url "https://download.java.net/java/GA/jdk#{version.before_comma}/#{version.after_colon}/#{version.after_comma.before_colon}/GPL/openjdk-#{version.before_comma}_osx-x64_bin.tar.gz" name 'OpenJDK Java Development Kit' homepage 'https://openjdk.java.net/' artifact "jdk-#{version.before_comma}.jdk", target: "/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk-#{version.before_comma}.jdk" uninstall rmdir: '/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines' end