Organise Installed Packages in Groups?

[i-am-linja]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.3.13
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 1e560120a65be3b3c7b8a42083d54f795e1d0ec4
Last commit: 2 days ago
Core tap JSON: 07 Aug 10:51 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 07 Aug 10:51 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
Homebrew Ruby: 3.3.4 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.3.4_1/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit arm_ibiza
Clang: 15.0.0 build 1500
Git: 2.39.3 => /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 14.6-arm64
CLT: 15.3.0.0.1.1708646388
Xcode: N/A
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Your system is ready to brew.

Description of issue

I'm not certain if this is a thing that can be done or a feature to propose.

Most packages I have installed are solely in service of another package: ffmpeg for yt-dlp, starship for fish, elixir-ls for elixir, fd ripgrep cmake libvterm for emacs-plus. What would be very nice is a way to group the ancillary packages under the primary, or just to group the primary and the ancillaries together, so I can see what is for what, and uninstall everything together should the need arise.

[carlocab]

Not quite grouping, but you can use brew leaves to check for formulae without any dependents installed.

Moreover, if you brew uninstall emacs-plus, then that should automatically remove fd, ripgrep, etc, unless you have HOMEBREW_NO_AUTOREMOVE set. If it doesn't do so automatically, you should be able to use brew autoremove.

[i-am-linja]

I don't mean dependencies, I mean roots. All of the ancillary packages I listed were explicitly installed, by me, to enhance (not enable) the functionality of the primaries. Unless there's a way to locally declare them as dependencies of the primaries, the mentioned tools do not help me.

[carlocab]

I see, apologies for misunderstanding. I don't think there's currently a way brew handles that. You might be interested in brew bundle, though -- it doesn't do exactly what you want, but maybe there's a way to use it that does what you need.

[i-am-linja]

Hmm. That's annoying. I'll see if I can finagle bundle. Thanks for trying.

[konnano]

You might be able to get around this by manually adding the auxiliary package to the depends_on of the primary package expression, but this could create a circular reference.

[carlocab]

Seems more sensible to create an external brew command to handle this. You could record the groups you want in JSON, and make that command install and uninstall them together.