[homebrew] How do I update a formula with Homebrew?

How do I update a formula?

I ran brew update. Then, running brew outdated, outputs:

mongodb (1.4.3-x86_64 < 1.6.5-x86_64)

Thus, mongodb is outdated.

How do I upgrade it? Do I just uninstall and then install?

I prefer to upgrade all homebrew formulae and homebrew cask formulae.

I added a Bourne shell function to my environment for this one (I load a .bashrc)

function updatebrew() {
set -x;
brew update;
brew cleanup;
brew cask upgrade --greedy
)
}

• set -x for transparency: So that the terminal outputs whatever Homebrew is doing in the background.
• brew update to update homebrew formulas
• brew cleanup to remove any change left over after installations
• brew cask upgrade --greedy will install all casks; both those with versioning information and those without

You will first need to update the local formulas by doing

brew update

and then upgrade the package by doing

brew upgrade formula-name

An example would be if i wanted to upgrade mongodb, i would do something like this, assuming mongodb was already installed :

brew update && brew upgrade mongodb && brew cleanup mongodb

You can update all outdated packages like so:

brew install `brew outdated`

or

brew outdated | xargs brew install

or

brew upgrade

This is from the brew site..

for upgrading individual formula:

brew install formula-name && brew cleanup formula-name

You can't use brew install to upgrade an installed formula. If you want upgrade all of outdated formulas, you can use the command below.

brew outdated | xargs brew upgrade

Well, I just did

brew install mongodb

and followed the instructions that were output to the STDOUT after it finished installing, and that seems to have worked just fine. I guess it kinda works just like make install and overwrites (upgrades) a previous install.