Homebrew won't brew any more

I had the same issue - seemed to be the result of a brew update that could not complete due to permissions issues.

First I reset the repo to the latest head:

cd /usr/local/bin
git reset --hard HEAD

Then I could run:

brew doctor

Which found permissions issues. Fixing those permissions as per instructions finally allowed me to run:

brew update

OS X messes up permissions with every update.

Try this:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/share/man/man1

and

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/share/man

and ensure that the current user (the one running brew) has permission to access /usr/local.


I replaced the script /usr/local/bin/brew with the new version I found on github. Now everything is fine again.

The latest file, of which, can be found here:

  • https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/bin/brew