brew install coreutils failing 10.9.5 OSX

Question

It has been 2 days that I have failed to install coreutils.

Last 15 lines from /Users/Mehdi/Library/Logs/Homebrew/coreutils/03.make:

src/ginstall -c
-m 644 'man/unlink.1' '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/share/man/man1/gunlink.1'   src/ginstall -c src/uniq '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin/./guniq'  src/ginstall -c -m 644 'man/vdir.1' '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/share/man/man1/gvdir.1' src/ginstall -c src/unlink '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin/./gunlink'   src/ginstall -c src/vdir '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin/./gvdir'  src/ginstall
-c -m 644 'man/wc.1' '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/share/man/man1/gwc.1'  src/ginstall
-c -m 644 'man/whoami.1' '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/share/man/man1/gwhoami.1'   src/ginstall -c src/wc '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin/./gwc'  src/ginstall -c -m 644 'man/yes.1' '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/share/man/man1/gyes.1'   src/ginstall -c src/whoami '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin/./gwhoami'   src/ginstall -c src/yes '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin/./gyes'   src/ginstall
-c src/ginstall '/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.27/bin' make[2]: *** [install-am] Error 2 make[1]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1 make:
*** [install] Error 2

Do not report this issue to Homebrew/brew or Homebrew/core!


Error: You are using macOS 10.9. We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version. You may encounter build failures or other breakages. Please create pull-requests instead of filing issues.

Answer 1

As stated in Clemens’ answer, Homebrew doesn’t support macOS 10.9. You can either:

• Try TigerBrew, a fork of Homebrew for old macOS versions

• Install coreutils from source, with something like the following:

  wget https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/coreutils/coreutils-8.25.tar.xz
  tar xJf coreutils-8.25.tar.xz
  cd coreutils-8.25/
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
  make
  sudo make install
  

Answer 2

This might be a stupid question but why are you still running OS 10.9? The current version is 10.12 and 10.13 will become out pretty soon. I'm not sure if this is related in any way to your issue but even the error message tells you that you "may encounter build failures or other breakages".

In short: Unless you have a very good reason not to (e.g. some apps that don't run on newer versions of macOS), I suggest updating to macOS 10.12 and see if it works there.