[Bug]: homebrew build: Mac CMakeLists.txt assumes `brew --prefix` command about netdata

[hugovalente-pm]

thanks for raising this ticket @timsutton, we are currently looking for ways to improve our MacOS installations but one thing we have as a callout is

The Netdata Homebrew package is community-created and -maintained. Community-maintained packages may receive support from Netdata, but are only a best-effort affair. Learn more about Netdata's platform support policy.

pinging you @Ferroin since you're currently looking into the MacOS installation

[Ferroin]

@timsutton Thanks for reporting this. I’d been a bit worried about it in general (not just in the context of building in Homebrew itself, but also WRT handling of other possible install sources), but had not yet had a chance to look into it myself, so having confirmation from the community that it’s an issue is really helpful.

I’ve opened a PR (#17250) to switch to using pkg-config everywhere and only fall back to querying the prefix via brew if we can’t find it with pkg-config, which based on what I know of Homebrew’s build environment should fix things here.

We’re already looking at doing a v1.45.1 patch release some time this week (probably Wednesday or Thursday) with a couple of urgent fixes for long-standing bugs that didn’t make it into v1.45.0, and I’ll try to make sure this gets included in that. If it doesn’t, it’s very likely that there will be another patch release by mid April at the absolute latest with a handful of other fixes related to building on macOS (which AFAIK are not an issue when building under Homebrew), and it will definitely be included there.

[timsutton]

@Ferroin Amazing! I was able to pull that patch into the formula's build and it works. Thanks for your time and expediency with that patch! It's quite possible the 1.45.1 release will happen before I can fix up a couple other issues with the formula.