How to install an homebrew formula without updating homebrew itself?

When I install or reinstall a formula, homebrew automatically update itself before installing the formula.

When working on a slow connection, this is annoying. How can I cancel this automatic update?

Solution 1:

According to this github issue and to the man page, the environment variable HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE can be set to 1.

HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 brew install <formula>

This will stop the homebrew update for this command. If you want to prevent auto update for your shell session, use:

export HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1

to set it permanently, add it to your ~/.bash_profile. Note that changing this permanently is discouraged by the developers.

source:

A better alternative may be instead to set HOMEBREW_AUTO_UPDATE_SECS to a higher value (the default is to try and update every 60 seconds).

export HOMEBREW_AUTO_UPDATE_SECS=<seconds_you_want>

Add the command to ~/.bash_profile to keep the settings for different terminal sessions.