What is the best/safest way to reinstall Homebrew?

Question

I am getting issues with permissions in Homebrew: After I installed Node and tried to install npm using the curl command Homebrew tells you to use, it would fail due to EACCESS errors. I checked the node folder and the permissions were a) unowned by a user (I had to chown it) and b) Had no write permissions (I had to chmod 755 it). I've fixed the issue with NPM, but I had to run its install script as sudo (which is bad!). I assume I must have installed Homebrew as root or something similar. I am hoping that reinstallation will fix it, but I can't find a source on how to reinstall Homebrew. When I rerun the installer in Terminal I get: ``` /usr/local/.git already exists! ```

Accepted Answer

Update 10/11/2020 to reflect the latest brew changes.

`Brew` already provide a command to uninstall itself (this will remove everything you installed with Homebrew):

```
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall.sh)"
```

If you failed to run this command due to permission (like run as second user), run again with sudo

Then you can install again:

```
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
```

What is the best/safest way to reinstall Homebrew?

Solution

Problem