What are the implications of deleting all content of /usr/local?

Question

After many days trying to solve a problem related to the installation of the R package 'rstan' I came to a possible solution that requires "Delete all of /usr/local/. Reinstall all developer software again from scratch."

The image attached shows the top level contents of my /usr/local/ directory. Based on this info, can anyone please give me some notion of the implications of deleting all?

Thank you for any help!

Answer 1

The main issue here is that you use Homebrew. Homebrew puts its files in /usr/local/ so deleting /usr/local will remove Homebrew

So if you are prepared to reinstall Homebrew then no real issue.

However if you are not installing R and rstan via Homebrew then you will get the same issue again. If you can install them via Homebrew than that is a solution.

Basically if you use Homebrew then do not install other software in /usr/local (e.g. via normal Unix make install) as they confuse each other.

If you have to use software that has to use its own installer to end up in /usr/local then I would suggest another package manager e/g/ Macports or Fink or build your software setting the install directory to be something other than /usr/local