brew cask update is deprecated but brew update doesn't work

[revolter]

General troubleshooting steps

• I have checked the instructions for reporting bugs (or making requests) before opening the issue.
  • None of the templates was appropriate for my issue, or I’m not sure.
• I ran brew update-reset && brew update and retried my command.
• I ran brew doctor, fixed as many issues as possible and retried my command.
• I understand that if I ignore these instructions, my issue may be closed without review.

Description of issue

Running brew cask update studio-3t prints this warning message:

Warning: Calling brew cask update is deprecated and will be disabled on 2017-07-01!
Use brew update instead.
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cask/lib/hbc/cli.rb:98:in `run_command'

Running brew update doesn't update studio-3t though.

Output of your command with --verbose --debug

Warning: Calling `brew cask update` is deprecated and will be disabled on 2017-07-01!
Use `brew update` instead.
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cask/lib/hbc/cli.rb:98:in `run_command'

==> Executing: ["/usr/local/bin/brew", "update"]
==> Already up-to-date.
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/compat/hbc/cli/update.rb:11:in `exit'
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/compat/hbc/cli/update.rb:11:in `run'
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cask/lib/hbc/cli.rb:98:in `run_command'
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cask/lib/hbc/cli.rb:168:in `run'
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cask/lib/hbc/cli.rb:132:in `run'
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cmd/cask.rb:8:in `cask'
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/brew.rb:101:in `<main>'

Output of brew cask doctor

==> Homebrew-Cask Version
Homebrew-Cask 1.2.3
caskroom/homebrew-cask (git revision 7692f; last commit 2017-06-21)
==> Homebrew-Cask Install Location
<NONE>
==> Homebrew-Cask Staging Location
/usr/local/Caskroom
==> Homebrew-Cask Cached Downloads
~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/Cask
==> Homebrew-Cask Taps:
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask (3639 casks)
==> Contents of $LOAD_PATH
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/cask/lib
/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew
/Library/Ruby/Site/2.0.0
/Library/Ruby/Site/2.0.0/x86_64-darwin16
/Library/Ruby/Site/2.0.0/universal-darwin16
/Library/Ruby/Site
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0.0
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0.0/x86_64-darwin16
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0.0/universal-darwin16
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/2.0.0
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/2.0.0/x86_64-darwin16
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/lib/ruby/2.0.0/universal-darwin16
==> Environment Variables
LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:~/.local:~/.local/bin:~/Library/Python/2.7/bin:/usr/local/opt/qt/bin:~/.local/git-scripts:~/.gems/bin:/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-command-not-found/cmd:/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/shims/scm"
SHELL="/bin/zsh"

[commitay]

Running brew update doesn't update studio-3t though.

$ brew update

$ brew cask reinstall studio-3t

Running brew update will update Homebrew and Homebrew-Cask not the casks that you have installed.

---

brew cask upgrade will install new versions of casks once it is implemented.

[revolter]

1. Why isn't brew cask update studio-3t calling brew cask reinstall studio-3t behind the scenes? As the semantics of the first command are much better than of the second one.
2. brew update updated the packages installed by Homebrew, not only Homebrew itself, so, logically, I thought brew cask update would update the casks installed by Homebrew Cask.
3. Why isn't brew cask reinstall mentioned in the brew cask update's warning message?

[commitay]

Why isn't brew cask update studio-3t calling brew cask reinstall studio-3t

brew cask update used to only update Homebrew-Cask before it merged with Homebrew

brew update updated the packages installed by Homebrew, not only Homebrew itself

No, it doesn't. brew update will update Homebrew, brew upgrade will install new versions of formula.

Why isn't brew cask reinstall mentioned in the brew cask update's warning message?

Because running brew cask update has never installed new versions of casks.

[revolter]

Oh, right, then, why isn't brew cask update && brew cask upgrade updating the installed casks?

[commitay]

As it said in the error message:

Warning: Calling `brew cask update` is deprecated and will be disabled on 2017-07-01!
Use `brew update` instead.

brew cask upgrade doesn't do anything currently, it is being implemented.

[vitorgalvao]

brew cask update used to only update Homebrew-Cask before it merged with Homebrew

Small correction there. brew cask update was always nothing more than an alias to brew update, meaning it updated everything¹. Part of the reason brew cask update was deprecated was that I kept seeing people do brew update && brew cask update, essentially running the same command twice. Clearly is wasn’t obvious that both commands did the same and the cask version only existed for convenience, so we decided to scrape it.

Everything else is spot on!

---

1: Not really everything. When homebrew-cask was itself a formula, brew update updated the casks but the core itself needed to be updated with brew upgrade brew-cask
or brew upgrade. This led to a situation where you might have casks that included features that the core didn’t understand (because you ran update but not upgrade). Casks even had different version specifications at that time due to that. Glad that time has passed.

[revolter]

Ok, understood. I would still add something along the lines of:

If you're trying to update a cask, run brew update && brew cask reinstall <cask-name> instead.

to that warning message.

[commitay]

Small correction there. brew cask update was always nothing more than an alias to brew update

Oops, thank you for the correction. 👍

I kept seeing people do brew update && brew cask update

Me (for a few months) 😆

[vitorgalvao]

Ok, understood. I would still add something along the lines of:

If you're trying to update a cask, run brew update && brew cask reinstall <cask-name> instead.

to that warning message.

To put it bluntly, everyone who misunderstands a message thinks we should add a correction to it according to their confusion. If we did so, every warning and notification would include the full length of our documentation. This is not a common confusion, so it does not need further clarification.

We make additions to messages when multiple people make a mistake (case in point, the aforementioned brew cask upgrade duplication). Otherwise we may still make messages clearer, but we’re not going to explain every use case in normal usage. That’s what man pages and online documentation are for.

Either way, seems like the issue is solved. So closing.