Sapphire: Rust based package manager for macOS (homebrew replacement)

Sapphire

WARNING: ALPHA SOFTWARE > Sapphire is experimental, under heavy development, and may be unstable. Use at your own risk!

Uninstalling a cask with brew then reinstalling it with Sapphire will have it installed with slightly different paths, your user settings etc. will not be migrated automatically.

Sapphire is a next‑generation, Rust‑powered package manager inspired by Homebrew. It installs and manages:

Formulae: command‑line tools, libraries, and languages
Casks: desktop applications and related artifacts on macOS

ARM only for now, might add x86 support eventually

Project Structure

sapphire‑core Core library: fetching, dependency resolution, archive extraction, artifact handling (apps, binaries, pkg installers, fonts, plugins, zap/preflight/uninstall stanzas, etc.)

sapphire‑cli Command‑line interface: sapphire executable wrapping the core library.

Current Status

Bottle installation and uninstallation
Cask installation and uninstallation
Parallel downloads and installs for speed
Automatic dependency resolution and installation
Building Formulae from source (very early impl)

Roadmap

Upgrade command to update installed packages
Cleanup old downloads, versions, caches
Reinstall command for quick re‑pours
Prefix isolation: support /opt/sapphire as standalone layout
sapphire init helper to bootstrap your environment
Ongoing Bug fixes and stability improvements

Usage

# Print help
sapphire –help

# Update metadata
sapphire update

# Search for packages
sapphire search

# Get package info
sapphire info

# Install bottles or casks
sapphire install

# Build and install a formula from source
sapphire install –build-from-source

# Uninstall
sapphire uninstall

# (coming soon)
sapphire upgrade [–all]
sapphire cleanup
sapphire init

Building from Source

Prerequisites: Rust toolchain (stable).

git clone
cd sapphire
cargo build –release
The sapphire binary will be at target/release/sapphire. Add it to your PATH.

Contributing

Sapphire lives and grows by your feedback and code! We’re particularly looking for:

Testing and bug reports for Cask & Bottle installation + –build-from-source
Test coverage for core and cask modules
CLI UI/UX improvements
See CONTRIBUTING.md

Feel free to open issues or PRs. Every contribution helps!

License