Installing Older Versions with Homebrew

#homebrew #vim

This article was originally published on bmf-tech.com.

Overview

Sometimes, you may want to install an older version of a package using Homebrew. Homebrew has adopted a policy of keeping only the latest versions, so installing older versions requires a bit of extra work, which I've noted here.

Method

I wanted to downgrade from vim9 to vim8, so I'll use that as an example.

Here are the steps:

brew tap-new bmf-san/vim8
brew extract vim bmf-san/vim8 --version 8.2.5150
brew install bmf-san/vim8/vim@8.2.5150
brew unlink vim
brew link vim@8.2.5150
vim --version // Should be 8.2.5150

You need to prepare your own repository for the tap. You can use a GitHub repository, but since there's a command called tap-new, I'll use that. The name can be anything.

brew tap-new bmf-san/vim8

To extract the old formula into the tap, use extract. The version specified can be anything, but it's safer to use a version that Homebrew managed in the past, so I searched for the commit of the desired version in the Homebrew repository. The commit I found is below.

github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/2e3d51340f2f9b47d680f656e712fbee77cbcf79/Formula/vim.rb

brew extract vim bmf-san/vim8 --version 8.2.5150

Install from the tap and adjust the symbolic links with link & unlink.

brew install bmf-san/vim8/vim@8.2.5150

brew unlink vim

brew link vim@8.2.5150