Missing symlink to xmlwf ?

[hpeifer8]

Hi,

Here my first question as homebrew newbie, after installing expat:
Why is /opt/homebrew/Cellar/expat/2.4.9/bin/xmlwf not symlinked under /opt/homebrew/bin ?

Thanks in advance, Hermann

[carlocab]

From brew info expat:

==> Caveats
expat is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /opt/homebrew,
because macOS already provides this software and installing another version in
parallel can cause all kinds of trouble.

This message will also have been shown to you after doing brew install expat:

❯ brew install expat
==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/expat/manifests/2.4.9
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/expat/blobs/sha256:d2aecb76db9667c371242d0d6f610249e15ee78e792cd0c53d3fb0e00ba7f3ac
==> Downloading from https://pkg-containers.githubusercontent.com/ghcr1/blobs/sha256:d2aecb76db9667c371242d0d6f610249e15ee78e792cd0c53d3fb0e00ba7f3ac?
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Pouring expat--2.4.9.arm64_monterey.bottle.tar.gz
==> Caveats
expat is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /opt/homebrew,
because macOS already provides this software and installing another version in
parallel can cause all kinds of trouble.
[snip]

As an aside, avoid referring to Cellar paths -- those are implementation details that you should pretend don't exist.

Instead, call xmlwf as /opt/homebrew/opt/expat/bin/xmlwf.

[hpeifer8]

Thanks for the really swift reply.

I am aware of the warning (keg-only ... not symlinked). Interesting enough, this warning was not shown in my case, as I was installing expat as a dependency of gdal

> brew install gdal
(...)
==> Installing dependencies for gdal: expat
==> Installing gdal dependency: expat
==> Pouring expat--2.4.9.arm64_monterey.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /opt/homebrew/Cellar/expat/2.4.9: 21 files, 606.2KB
==> Installing gdal
==> Pouring gdal--3.5.2.arm64_monterey.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.5.2: 422 files, 61.0MB
==> Running brew cleanup gdal...

# I also tried reinstalling expat, which did not throw the warning either 

> brew reinstall expat
(...)
==> Reinstalling expat
==> Pouring expat--2.4.9.arm64_monterey.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /opt/homebrew/Cellar/expat/2.4.9: 21 files, 606.2KB
==> Running `brew cleanup expat`...

# Only this way I get the keg-only warning and other hints under Caveats

> brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies expat && brew install expat
(...)
==> Caveats
expat is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /opt/homebrew,
(...)

[carlocab]

That's a bug. Please file an issue at Homebrew/brew.

[hpeifer8]

Done as issue Homebrew/brew/issues/13936