When comparing Homebrew Cask vs Rudix, the Slant community recommends Homebrew Cask for most people. In the question“What are the best Mac package managers?” Homebrew Cask is ranked 2nd while Rudix is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Homebrew Cask is:
Homebrew Cask adds functionality to Homebrew such as allowing downloads of commercial licensed apps.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Extends Homebrew
Homebrew Cask adds functionality to Homebrew such as allowing downloads of commercial licensed apps.
Pro "Zap" application configuration
this is an interesting feature allowing user to remove application configuration leftowers
Pro Manage graphical applications through the command line
Homebrew Cask allows you to install graphical applications through the command line, rather than having to go through the standard installation process.
E.g. brew cask install google-chrome
Pro Statically linked packages
Using statically liked packages allows each package to contain all of the dependencies it needs, this way the user just installs to then use the app. No muss no fuss.
Pro Very easy and fast
Installing and removing packages is very easy, fast and painless thanks to using binary installs.
Cons
Con Cask update is usually manual
This defeats the purpose of the packet manager.
Con Requires Xcode
Homebrew Cask requires that Xcode is installed, which may be more work than what some want to spend on configuring this app.
Con Software no longer needed by anything (orphans) is hard to delete
Con The developers are hostile to the users reporting issues
Con Silently spies on the user by default
See here.
Con Duplicate apps found in brew may cause issue
There are warnings provided that apps found in brew should not be installed with brew cask (and vice versa). While the user is warned of this, mistakes can happen, which would be better to just see them avoided all together by not supplying duplicate apps.
Con Goes against Apple's design choices with macOS and breaks the system
Con Not many packages
Although Rudix is in development since 2005, there's a distinct lack of packages available. This limits the usefulness of the package manager for the user.
Con Lacks man files for installed packages
The man files for tools are not installed with the binaries.
Con Not sandboxed
Binaries go directly to /usr/bin, so they are not sandboxed.