[HaraldNordgren]

brew info -v can show no dependents for a keg that brew uninstall refuses to remove because of its dependents, which makes the keg look safe to delete when it isn't. I hit this with an icu4c keg from 2022. icu4c has since become an alias of icu4c@79, and the keg is still in Cellar/icu4c/70.1.

To reproduce, you need a keg installed before its formula became an alias, plus a dependent from that time:

$ brew info -v icu4c
$ brew info -v icu4c@79
$ brew uses --installed icu4c
mysql
node
postgresql@18
yarn
$ brew uninstall icu4c
Error: Refusing to uninstall /usr/local/Cellar/icu4c/70.1
because it is required by mysql, node, postgresql@18 and yarn, which are currently installed.

Both brew info commands print the keg but no "Dependencies" section at all.

Loading the arguments resolves the alias, so both commands run as the icu4c@79 formula and only search install receipts for that name. Receipts keep the dependency name from install time, here icu4c, so they never match. brew info already finds the keg itself through Formula#possible_names, which covers the formula name, old names and aliases.

This matches receipts against Formula#possible_names too, so both commands now print:

==> Dependencies
Dependents (4): mysql, node, postgresql, yarn

brew info prints keg names, which is why it says postgresql where brew uninstall says postgresql@18.

Across my 159 installed formulae this changes four. Besides icu4c@79, openssl@4 and python@3.15 gain mercurial and pkgconf gains libpthread-stubs, libx11 and libxcb. The lists for those three now match brew uses --installed exactly.

---

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---

• I did not use AI/LLM to create this PR, or I disclosed the tool/model below and reviewed its output; I did not attribute commits to AI and will answer maintainer questions and review comments myself without AI/LLM.

Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5) traced why brew info and brew uninstall disagreed, wrote the change and its spec and verified them. The new spec fails without the change and passes with it. It ran the reproduction steps on main and on this branch, compared the dependents of my installed formulae before and after and ran brew lgtm, which passes.

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[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review.

Summary

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Verbose formula information now counts installed dependents whose recorded runtime dependency uses the formula’s canonical name, an alias, a previous name or a tap-qualified name.
  • Dependents recorded under unrelated names are excluded from the count, providing a more accurate view of installed dependents.

The info command now checks installed runtime dependency receipts against all possible formula names. A verbose inventory test covers canonical, alias, old-name and tap-qualified matches, and excludes a dependent recorded with an unrelated name.

Changes: Dependent name matching

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Match receipt names and verify counts Library/Homebrew/cmd/info.rb, Library/Homebrew/test/cmd/info_spec.rb	installed_dependent_names accepts multiple names, and the formula information path supplies formula.possible_names. The test checks alias, old-name and tap-qualified matches, and excludes an unrelated name.

Merge Risk: Low · up to 0d658

The dependent list can include an unrelated formula in a cross-tap name collision. This is a bounded display risk and does not block merging.

Pre-merge checks: 4

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check		The title describes the change to show dependents recorded under other formula names.
Description check		The description explains the dependent matching issue, the change, and the related tests.
Linked Issues check		Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check		Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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[coderabbitai]

Nitpick comments: 1

Library/Homebrew/test/cmd/info_spec.rb: 1

757-759: Trivial · Maintainability & Code Quality · Quick win

Cover tap-qualified dependency receipts.

The example covers bare alias and old-name receipts, but it does not exercise the Utils.name_from_full_name path used for a receipt such as homebrew/core/testball. Add one qualified dependency and assert that it is included.

Suggested test update

       "alias-dependent"   => "testball",
       "oldname-dependent" => "old-testball",
+      "qualified-dependent" => "homebrew/core/testball",
       "other-dependent"   => "other-formula",
@@
-      .to output(/^Dependents \(2\): alias-dependent, oldname-dependent$/).to_stdout
+      .to output(/^Dependents \(3\): alias-dependent, oldname-dependent, qualified-dependent$/).to_stdout

Source: Learnings

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• Library/Homebrew/test/cmd/info_spec.rb

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