How can I make a private (i.e. not hosted on GitHub) brew tap?

Question

I would like to have a private brew tap for homebrew that is not hosted on GitHub. I've tried simply cloning the tap's repo into /usr/local/Library/Taps but doesn't appear to work. Anyone figured this out?

Answer 1

The new short answer is yes: brew any-tap has been merged into brew tap so any repository, including private GitHub ones should now be supported.

brew tap restricts users to GitHub and checks for private repos. I created brew any-tap to support a wider variety of taps.

With very small changes (and no extra flags!), this PR brings any-tap to brew.

Users can use brew tap with GitHub as they always have or add one extra argument and tap any repository of any type from anywhere.

tl;dr

brew tap user/name # Same as it ever was
brew tap user/name URL # Tap URL, whatever it happens to be

Answer 2

Short answer: It's not supported, but there's a hacky way to do it if you're bound and determined: https://github.com/telemachus/homebrew-anytap