Brew version of youtube-dl seems out-of-date

[shlomiv]

Output of brew config

brew config                                                                                                                                                                                             ~
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 3.5.10
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: c5731faf8be1ddc1eeae4b162b88bd76318fc279
Last commit: 7 months ago
Core tap ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core
Core tap HEAD: 0398c0937e7f745c93e3daf21f9a82ddcd17e5a6
Core tap last commit: 7 months ago
Core tap branch: master
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
Homebrew Ruby: 2.6.8 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/2.6.8_1/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit arm_firestorm_icestorm
Clang: 12.0.5 build 1205
Git: 2.34.1 => /opt/homebrew/bin/git
Curl: 7.64.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 11.4-arm64
CLT: 12.5.0.22.11
Xcode: N/A
Rosetta 2: false

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Description of issue

Not sure where to ask for this, so hope I am in the right spot.

I asked youtube-dl maintainers about when one of their fixes would be brewable, and they turned me here, to ask you for the following:

ask them below to package youtube-dl from a recent master branch code snapshot instead of from last (but now deprecated) tagged release (as a new one isn't imminent - not yet, at least...):

https://github.com/Homebrew/discussions/discussions

Would that be something that you guys do? I have no clue how this works, just want the package to work as expected.

Thanks!

[gromgit]

Not a Homebrew maintainer, but "recent master branch code snapshot" is entirely arbitrary, and easily leads to daily builds (or worse) as users clamor for the latest "must-have" feature that was just committed an hour ago.

Also, the yt-dlp folks don't seem to have the same issue with regular releases, so I've long since switched to them.

[shlomiv]

Thanks for the reply @gromgit!

Yes, basing on master seems a bit risky to me as you mentioned.. Not sure why its that way, maybe @Vangelis66 would be able to shed some light about this decision.

In any event, I was able to solve this outside of brew, with the following snippet (uninstall brew version of youtube-dl first):

sudo curl -L https://github.com/ytdl-patched/youtube-dl/releases/latest/download/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

This seems to install latest version directly.

Thanks for the tip regarding yt-dlp, I may give it a try!

[Vangelis66]

... As I posted in yt-dl's tracker, I'm not affiliated with the current youtube-dl maintainer, simply volunteering there 😜 ...

maybe @Vangelis66 would be able to shed some light about this decision.

"New release" discussion can be found below:

ytdl-org/youtube-dl#31585 (several duplicates of that issue exist); pending PR is:

ytdl-org/youtube-dl#30644

At this point, the best approach is to "update" via installing from latest git source (e.g. pip git+https...); or use the binaries kindly offered at:
https://github.com/ytdl-patched/youtube-dl/

the yt-dlp folks don't seem to have the same issue with regular releases

... Well, they do monthly stable releases (but nightly ones, too), so, perhaps, the Homebrew team could cut and package "monthly" releases from youtube-dl's git-master, until the "stable release" problems have been sorted... Just my 2c...

[shlomiv]

Thank you @Vangelis66, for referencing the monthly builds, hopefully this is something brew could use!

Also thank you for volunteering on youtube-dl, you sure got me fooled as a maintainer 😅

[gromgit]

the yt-dlp folks don't seem to have the same issue with regular releases

... Well, they do monthly stable releases (but nightly ones, too), so, perhaps, the Homebrew team could cut and package "monthly" releases from youtube-dl's git-master, until the "stable release" problems have been sorted...

The "they" is key here. Upstream tags are an implicit promise that "this is a stable and easily identifiable version that should be safe to distribute, report issues on, and revert to in the worst case". It would be foolish for large-scale downstream distributors like Homebrew to choose a commit on one project, with zero knowledge about the underlying codebase (to say nothing about any pending deal-breaking issues on the same), and say "OK, even though upstream doesn't think they're ready to commit to a release, we'll make that decision for them". It would be positively insane for them to do so across the thousands of projects they distribute binaries for.

As for https://github.com/ytdl-patched/youtube-dl/, it's clearly marked "unofficial". Given the Homebrew maintainers' track record of refusing to update stale projects to a more lively fork without a clear "blessing" from the original project owners, I doubt they'll want to use this project as a "source of truth" for stable releases.

[carlocab]

I've opened Homebrew/homebrew-core#125804. When that is merged, you can use

brew install --HEAD youtube-dl

to install youtube-dl from the tip of the master branch. Note that this install will no longer be automatically updated by brew upgrade, and that we don't provide support for --HEAD installs (because they require building from source and these can fail for any reason). However, if you're feeling adventurous you may wish to give it a try.