Homebrew-cask: Bug report: "Error: Unknown command: cask" after #23852

[xinan]

This issue seems to happen only after #23852 was merged. I did a git reset --hard to reset /usr/local/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask to a commit just before the merge commit and everything worked well. However, if I reset it to the merge commit, it starts to have this error.

Description of issue

brew cask returns

Error: Unknown command: cask

The issue persists after trying all the commands in the "pre-bug-report":

$ brew update; brew cleanup; brew cask cleanup
Already up-to-date.
Removing: (...)
==> This operation has freed approximately 969.5M of disk space.
==> Removing cached downloads
(...)
==> This operation has freed approximately 401.9M of disk space.

$ brew uninstall --force brew-cask; brew update
Already up-to-date.

$ brew untap phinze/cask; brew untap caskroom/cask; brew update
Error: No available tap phinze/cask.
Untapping caskroom/cask... (3,781 files, 74.8M)
Untapped 0 formulae
Already up-to-date.

$ brew cask
==> Tapping caskroom/cask
Cloning into '/usr/local/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask'...
remote: Counting objects: 3379, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3361/3361), done.
remote: Total 3379 (delta 37), reused 439 (delta 12), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (3379/3379), 1.14 MiB | 812.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (37/37), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Tapped 0 formulae (3,386 files, 3.5M)
Error: Unknown command: cask

Output of brew cask <command> --verbose

Error: Unknown command: cask

Output of brew doctor

Your system is ready to brew.

Output of brew cask doctor

Error: Unknown command: cask

[xinan]

Also, I found that brew update doesn't rebase /usr/local/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask to the latest master. My branch was 306 commits behind master even after brew update.

So brew cask was working. I didn't want to update the repo manually although it seems quite outdated.

However, I was trying to update the flux cask (#23933), the cask-repair script automatically pulls the repo and causes brew cask to break (which causes the script itself to break because it needs brew cask). So in the end I had to reset this repo to an old commit, and clone another copy of the repo elsewhere to submit the update.

[jawshooah]

This likely has more to do with brew being unable to find cask than anything inherent to cask itself. @MikeMcQuaid any idea what could be going on here?

[adidalal]

Aha, I found the bug, it was a brew issue.

@xinan, try the following cd $(brew --repo); git fetch; git reset --hard origin/master; brew update

@jawshooah https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/commit/1e76a207b5bfacebee0a7198318230446be8da47 wouldn't have shown up in tests because the tests were only run same day. Unfortunately, this makes for an absolutely terrible user experience, as the error is quite cryptic

[xinan]

🎉 It worked! So what's the problem here?

[jawshooah]

Ah, yup, it's right at the top of Homebrew's readme.

[adidalal]

@xinan Homebrew error, it wasn't updating, even though it reported as being up to date. Making an FAQ right now; will close this issue after I push through the README change.

[jawshooah]

@xinan There was a bad commit that screwed up brew update for anyone who ran it during a particular time window a week or so ago.

[xinan]

I see! Thanks for the info! I should have checked homebrew page first. 😅

Seems that my crontask that updates brew every hour fired back at me. If I've been running it manually I would have noticed that it always says "Already up to date".

[adidalal]

Updated Reporting Bugs section!