Cask: beginners question about updating alt-tab cask

[creativeusernamegoeshere]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.4.0
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 84c31175f11860129a9aaed40a13c549625e2db1
Last commit: 9 days ago
Core tap JSON: 10 Oct 09:28 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 10 Oct 09:28 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 12
Homebrew Ruby: 3.3.5 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.3.5/bin/ruby
CPU: dodeca-core 64-bit arm_lobos
Clang: 16.0.0 build 1600
Git: 2.39.5 => /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.0.1-arm64
CLT: 16.0.0.0.1.1724870825
Xcode: 16.0
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Your system is ready to brew.

Description of issue

https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/alt-tab#default shows Current version: 7.0.0.

When checking via CLI:

➜  ~ brew list --cask --versions alt-tab
alt-tab 6.72.0

This persists after brew update. However when running brew upgrade --cask alt-tab seeing Upgrading 1 outdated package: alt-tab 6.72.0 -> 7.0.0.

Should this not have been seen after brew update already?

Relevant casks

alt-tab

[SMillerDev]

brew update only updates brew, brew upgrade upgrades packages you have installed.

[creativeusernamegoeshere]

Thanks for the quick reply. Right, but that did not update alt-tab. My question is, should brew upgrade have updated alt-tab to v7.0.0 when executed? (It did not)

➜  ~ brew update                
==> Updating Homebrew...
Already up-to-date.

and

brew upgrade               
==> Upgrading 2 outdated packages:
python-packaging 24.1 -> 24.1_1
openexr 3.3.0 -> 3.3.1

but alt-tab 7.0.0 was not found.

[carlocab]

alt-tab auto-updates, so brew doesn't upgrade it to a new version with brew upgrade. If you want brew to upgrade it anyway:

brew upgrade --greedy alt-tab

You can see the fact that alt-tab auto-updates with brew info alt-tab:

❯ brew info alt-tab
==> alt-tab: 7.0.0 (auto_updates)
[snip]

brew most likely also mentioned this when you did brew install alt-tab.

[creativeusernamegoeshere]

Not familiar with the internals but what is the reasoning behind using auto-updates, if they don't ... well, auto-update and require a manual trigger for the specific app in order to find an update? Or am I misunderstanding something?

[carlocab]

Casks that auto-update do not require a manual trigger to find an update. brew upgrade --greedy is just there if you want to ignore the cask's auto-update mechanism and update it using brew anyway.