> and couldn't upgrade because Apple didn't support my hardware anymore

I'd classify that as an Apple problem rather than a Homebrew problem. If Apple themselves cannot be arsed to support an OS version, why would a volunteer project take on such a challenge?

For every piece of software I've fetched using Homebrew, there's a "compile from source" option available on Github or some other source repo.

>I will never use Homebrew again because I'm still sore that they dropped support for a Mac OS version that I was still using and couldn't upgrade because Apple didn't support my hardware anymore.

How old was it? With macOS "running an old version" is not really a viable or advisable path beyond a certain point. Might be something people want to do, might it a great option to have, but it's not very workable nor supported by Apple and the general ecosystem.

>Any decent project should have a way to install without Homebrew. It's really not necessary.

We don't install homebrew because it's necessary, but because it's convenient. No way in hell I'm gonna install 50+ programs I use one by one using the projects' own installers.

Besides, if "Homebrew dropped support" is an incovenience, "manually look for dozens of individual installers or binaries, make sure dependencies work well together, build when needed, and update all that yourself again manually" is even more of an inconvenience. Not to mention many projects on their own drop support for macOS versions all the time, or offer no binaries or installers.

Consider using MacPorts then, which only recently dropped support for Tiger and supports Leopard.

> and couldn't upgrade because Apple didn't support my hardware anymore.

If you really want, you may be able to upgrade the OS anyways with https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher.

Or use Homebrew on the old OS with TigerBrew (https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew), but people online suggest MacPorts, not only because it has first-party support but also because it’s apparently better designed.

Seems reasonable to not support an OS apple doesn’t support anymore

Why not use MacPorts, which currently supports all the way back to Leopard, has far more packages than Homebrew, has a better design, and was created by the creator of the original FreeBSD ports system who also worked on Apple's UNIX team?

The ubiquity of Homebrew continues to confound me.

I guess I ran into the same thing. I try to install anything with Homebrew and it takes forever then breaks.

I went to macports because of that. Not looking back

The whole Apple ecosystem demands continually updates. You don't buy Apple and then complain about it.