Zerobrew

lastmod 2026-02-12created 2026-02-121 edits

A package manager 5–20x faster than Homebrew

About

Makes Mac package installation 5–20x faster while keeping command compatibility with Homebrew
Uses the Homebrew CDN as is, so it can be used immediately by just replacing the brew command with zb
Open source in Rust, applying the model of the uv project to Mac package management
- Stores packages in a SHA256-based content-addressable store
- Uses a zero-copy reinstall structure that restores instantly when reinstalling the same package
- Minimizes disk overhead with Copy-on-Write using APFS clonefile
Speeds up the whole installation process with parallel downloads and streaming execution
- Handles downloading, extracting, and linking concurrently
- Maximizes network efficiency with aggressive HTTP caching and CDN connection racing
Existing Homebrew Brewfiles can be used as is
- Supports bulk installation with the zb install --file Brewfile or zb bundle command
Provides intuitive commands such as zb install, zb uninstall, zb gc, and zbx
Benchmark results
- Average speedup of 2.0x (cold) and 7.6x (warm) on the top 100 packages
- Up to 18–29x improvement for sqlite, libsodium, tesseract, etc.
Dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 and MIT
Experimental, but compatible with most core Homebrew packages

author Zer0 sitemap