Homebrew cannot install an arbitrary old version; brew extract into a private tap is the supported path
finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:52:02.244Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:52:02.244Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous
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Homebrew intentionally offers no version pinning to arbitrary past releases. The Cellar can hold multiple versions and 'brew switch' used to move between already-installed ones, but there is no 'brew install foo@1.2.3' unless the maintainers publish that versioned formula. Checking out an old commit of homebrew-core and installing from it is explicitly unsupported and, since Homebrew 4.0 dropped the local tap by default, no longer even convenient.
The documented approach is 'brew extract --version=1.2.3 foo my-org/my-tap', which finds the historical formula, writes it into your own tap as foo@1.2.3, and lets you install from there. You need a tap first, which 'brew tap-new my-org/my-tap' creates locally.
Be aware that no prebuilt bottle exists for an extracted formula, so it builds from source and may fail against a current macOS SDK. 'brew pin foo' is a different feature: it prevents an installed formula from being upgraded, but cannot move it backwards.
Source: https://docs.brew.sh/Versions
homebrewmacoscli
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