macOS

re.Brew

Your dotfiles, re-brewed.

Bootstrap a fresh Mac in minutes. Manage dotfiles across machines.
Audit every installed app and migrate to Homebrew — effortlessly.

Clone on GitHub See it live ↓
bash — ~/redotbrew
▌

How it works

Three commands. One fully-managed Mac.

1

Bootstrap

Run ./bootstrap.sh on any Mac. Pre-flight checks validate sudo, Xcode CLT, and MAS login. Installs Homebrew, your Brewfile, dotfiles via Stow, nvm + Node LTS, and the rebrew CLI. Existing apps are skipped gracefully.

→
2

Manage Dotfiles

Use rebrew stow to symlink Zsh, Git, VS Code, and SSH configs from the repo into $HOME. Change once, synced everywhere.

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3

Audit & Migrate

Run rebrew scan to scan every app and CLI tool, check Homebrew coverage, and get an interactive HTML report.

Everything you need

One bootstrap, one CLI, four powerful commands.

⚡

bootstrap.sh

One-command Mac setup. Installs Homebrew, runs your Brewfile, applies dotfiles, bootstraps nvm + Node LTS, and installs the rebrew CLI. Pre-flight checks validate sudo, Xcode CLT, and App Store login. Existing apps, dotfile symlinks, and VS Code extensions are skipped if already in place.

Resilient --dry-run --force Pre-flight
🔗

rebrew stow

Powered by GNU Stow. Symlinks your configs from the repo into $HOME — no copying, no drift. Use --dry-run to preview or --adopt to pull in existing files.

GNU Stow Selective --adopt
📊

rebrew scan

Scans /Applications and your full $PATH. Checks every item against the Homebrew catalog. Outputs a self-contained HTML dashboard with bar charts, live search, and per-app migration guidance.

Interactive HTML CSV export Parallel scan
🔄

rebrew sync

Compares your currently installed Homebrew packages against the Brewfile. Shows drift at a glance — additions, removals, and mismatches. Use --apply to update the Brewfile while preserving your curated section headers, sub-comments, and entry ordering.

Drift detection --apply Layout-preserving

CLI Reference

The rebrew CLI is installed automatically by ./bootstrap.sh. All day-to-day tasks go through it. 

rebrew bootstrap [--dry-run] [--force]  Full macOS setup (with pre-flight checks)
rebrew scan [--output-dir DIR]         Audit installed apps and check Homebrew availability
rebrew stow [--dry-run] [pkg]          Apply dotfile symlinks via GNU Stow
rebrew sync [--apply]                  Compare installed packages against Brewfile
rebrew help                            Show help
rebrew version                         Print version

See the audit dashboard live

The interactive HTML report generated by rebrew scan — sample data shown.

~/Downloads/installed_apps_audit.html

Generate yours: rebrew scan && open ~/Downloads/installed_apps_audit.html

Quick start

Up and running in four steps.

1 — Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/tmdbah/redotbrew.git ~/redotbrew
cd ~/redotbrew
2 — Preview with dry-run
./bootstrap.sh --dry-run
3 — Bootstrap your Mac
./bootstrap.sh
4 — Use the CLI
rebrew scan                # audit every installed app
rebrew sync                # check Brewfile drift
rebrew stow --dry-run      # preview dotfile symlinks
Full docs on GitHub →

Built on top of Homebrew

re.Brew stands on the shoulders of Homebrew — the Missing Package Manager for macOS. Homebrew's formula and cask ecosystem is what makes reproducible Mac setups possible. Huge respect to the Homebrew maintainers and community for building such an indispensable tool.

Powered by GNU Stow

Dotfile management in re.Brew is powered by GNU Stow — the elegant symlink farm manager. Stow makes it possible to version-control your configs and reproduce them on any machine with a single command. Sincere thanks to the GNU Stow maintainers for such a simple and reliable tool.