brew cask Update or uninstall error: definition is invalid: invalid 'depends_on macos' value: ":lion"

Question

I can't uninstall or upgrade some casks due to a definition error.

F.e. if I run update or upgrade:

brew cask upgrade the-unarchiver  
Error: Cask 'the-unarchiver' definition is invalid: invalid 'depends_on macos' value: ":lion"

brew cask uninstall the-unarchiver 
Error: Cask 'the-unarchiver' definition is invalid: invalid 'depends_on macos' value: ":lion"

I've tried to see if there's something I can edit in the formula but I didn't find anything related to this error.

cask 'the-unarchiver' do
  version '4.1.0,121:1549634528'
  sha256 'ff97b168f07d084e88f48e5d1e5202445596acd6eec39685d28910ee71d3a74b'

  # devmate.com/com.macpaw.site.theunarchiver was verified as official when first introduced to the cask
  url "https://dl.devmate.com/com.macpaw.site.theunarchiver/#{version.after_comma.before_colon}/#{version.after_colon}/TheUnarchiver-#{version.after_comma.before_colon}.zip"
  appcast 'https://updates.devmate.com/com.macpaw.site.theunarchiver.xml'
  name 'The Unarchiver'
  homepage 'https://theunarchiver.com/'

  auto_updates true

  app 'The Unarchiver.app'

  zap trash: [
               '~/Library/Caches/cx.c3.theunarchiver',
               '~/Library/Cookies/cx.c3.theunarchiver.binarycookies',
               '~/Library/Preferences/cx.c3.theunarchiver.plist',
               '~/Library/Saved Application State/cx.c3.theunarchiver.savedState',
             ]
end

Solution

Homebrew cask developers deleted pre-maverics dependencies support due to the high maintenance overhead and it looks like they introduced a bug.

The way to fix it is to run:

/usr/bin/find "$(brew --prefix)/Caskroom/"*'/.metadata' -type f -name '*.rb' -print0 | /usr/bin/xargs -0 /usr/bin/perl -i -0pe 's/depends_on macos: \[.*?\]//gsm;s/depends_on macos: .*//g'

You can find this solution, the reason for this error and more info in:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/58046

Comments

[nmr]

FWIW this also seems to work for other broken dependencies, e.g. brew uninstall wine-stable Error: Cask 'wine-stable' definition is invalid: invalid depends_on key: ':x11' -> /usr/bin/find "$(brew --prefix)/Caskroom/"*'/.metadata' -type f -name '*.rb' -print0 | /usr/bin/xargs -0 /usr/bin/perl -i -0pe 's/depends_on x11: \[.*?\]//gsm;s/depends_on x11: .*//g' -> uninstall succeeds now

[pratt]

@nmr Thank you! This is what I was looking for. Also was unable to uninstall Wine.

[davidawad]

this seems to have also worked for me, thanks!

[Steve Benner]

Did NOT work on my macOS 10.14 system.