Brew Upgrade takes ~30gb

[DoozyDak]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.6.18
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 00001bedf8eac442bdabd327148be0b97998b27b
Last commit: 34 hours ago
Branch: stable
Core tap JSON: 20 Oct 17:51 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 20 Oct 17:51 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_FORBID_PACKAGES_FROM_PATHS: set
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
Homebrew Ruby: 3.4.5 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.4.5/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit arm_blizzard_avalanche
Clang: 17.0.0 build 1700
Git: 2.50.1 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 26.0.1-arm64
CLT: 26.0.0.0.1.1757719676
Xcode: 26.0.1
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
  /usr/local/lib/libASAF.dylib

Warning: Unbrewed header files were found in /usr/local/include.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected header files:
  /usr/local/include/node/*

Description of issue

I originally posted this issue on the raycast github and they said "I think it's very unlikely to be an issue with the extension - we cache only the list of formula and casks, which is a few MB at most."

When I used the brew upgrade from raycast I watched my finder as ~30gb were taken up. I was surprised but I know that this sort of thing has happened before and I always managed to fix it. I assumed that it would all go back after when I used brew cleanup, but it was all still there. I have no idea how it has taken up around 30gb all of a sudden and the last time I used brew upgrade and cleanup, the storage was okay but the cleanup kept failing so I had to manually delete an old python version. I surfed through the finder to look for what was taking up the storage and could not find anything significant. I started with ~65gb of free space and have been left with ~30gb after this.

running du -hs * | sort -h gets me
[all the other packages that were listed are 0B]
4.0K all_commands_list.txt
4.0K external_commands_list.txt
496K linkage.json
6.8M Backup
6.8M bootsnap
8.2M sunshine-beta--miniupnpc--git
46M api
838M downloads
3.2G sunshine-beta--git

and running brew info gets me
147 kegs, 59,149 files, 3.4GB

I have restarted my computer and looked through brew commands to look for anything that could help and didn't find anything. I really need an explanation as to why when I run brew upgrade I can watch ~30gb of free space disappear into thin air before my eyes.

[DoozyDak]

Some extra context that might be relevant: I recently (between when I last brew upgrade and now) installed Xcode on my Mac. I had command line tools before so maybe that has something to do with it.

[p-linnane]

I'm not sure what Raycast is, or how it applies to this. You're saying when you run brew upgrade ~30GB of space is consumed on your disk but you can't determine where? Nothing in the output you've provided shows anything close to that amount. Does removing ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew help?

[DoozyDak]

That folder displays as 4.1gb and I have surfed specifically through all of the directories in it to make sure. I haven't deleted it.

[bevanjkay]

Can you please provide the output of brew ls?

It looks like the extension has a preference for setting the --greedy flag for when it tries to upgrade your packages. This is not the default behaviour for brew upgrade and can result in some Casks being downloaded in their entirety, as comparing what is currently available from the developer and what is installed is the only way to detect if the application has been updated.

I would suggest changing the setting in Raycast to disable the "greedy" upgrades if the network consumption is an issue for you.

Ref: https://github.com/raycast/extensions/blob/7e34b43ddae14f323d6dbea4da4a42463458a1ac/extensions/brew/src/upgrade.tsx#L9

[DoozyDak]

==> Formulae
aom libevent netpbm
aribb24 libgit2 nettle
brotli libheif ninja
c-ares libidn node
ca-certificates libidn2 opencore-amr
cairo liblqr openexr
certifi libmicrohttpd openjpeg
cjson libnghttp2 openjph
cmake libnghttp3 openssl@3
curl libngtcp2 opus
dav1d libogg p11-kit
doxygen libomp pango
exiftool libpng pcre2
ffmpeg libraw pipx
flac librist pixman
fontconfig librsvg pkgconf
freetype libsamplerate python-setuptools
frei0r libsndfile python@3.13
fribidi libsodium python@3.14
gd libsoxr rav1e
gdk-pixbuf libssh readline
gettext libssh2 rtmpdump
gh libtasn1 rubberband
ghostscript libtiff rust
giflib libtool sdl2
glib libudfread shared-mime-info
gmp libunibreak simdjson
gnutls libunistring snappy
graphite2 libuv speex
graphviz libvidstab sqlite
gts libvmaf srt
harfbuzz libvorbis sunshine-beta
highway libvpx svt-av1
icu4c@77 libx11 tesseract
imagemagick libxau theora
imath libxcb unbound
jasper libxdmcp uvwasi
jbig2dec libxext webp
jpeg-turbo libxrender wget
jpeg-xl libzip x264
lame little-cms2 x265
leptonica llvm xorgproto
libarchive lz4 xvid
libass lzo xz
libavif m4 yt-dlp
libb2 mbedtls z3
libbluray miniupnpc zeromq
libde265 mpdecimal zimg
libdeflate mpg123 zstd

==> Casks
music-presence

[RobinRauber]

brew doctor also gives me the same warning:

Unexpected dylibs:
  /usr/local/lib/libASAF.dylib

Does anybody know what this dylib is for?

I’m a bit confused because it is signed by Apple and might have something to do with Apple Immersive Audio / Spatial Audio. (ASAF - Apple Spatial Audio Format?) As you can see, its dependencies are if you use otool -L /usr/local/lib/libASAF.dylib.

But what confuses me is why it is put in /usr/local/lib/ and not somewhere in /usr/lib/ or /System/Library/
Would really appreciate it if someone has a solution for this issue.

[bevanjkay]

The brew doctor output for the unexpected dylibs is only relevant if you are experiencing issues. You can ignore it if everything is fine.

[RobinRauber]

Thanks, just being curious why it’s there and the issue annoyed me ^^

[ANRlm]

Do you understand the function of this file? I also discovered this dylib file through brew doctor and came to this issue through google.

[gromgit]

That dylib probably belongs to some non-Homebrew software you installed at some point. If you really want to know what it's connected with, just move the dylib to some other directory and run each third-party application you installed outside Homebrew. The one that fails to work correctly is likely the culprit.

If nothing breaks, you can either move it back or delete it permanently, your call.

[ANRlm]

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll give that a try and see which application it belongs to.