Install nanomsg with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• nanocat

Project history

The project grew out of Martin Sustrik's post-ZeroMQ design work. nanomsg's own documentation preserves the historical motivation as a comparison with ZeroMQ by the original author of both projects: MIT licensing, a POSIX-like C API, implementation in C rather than C++, formal protocol/transport APIs, and different threading behavior were central design goals.

The GitHub repository was created on 2012-10-10. Later, Garrett D'Amore's NNG became the successor path: the nanomsg homepage says nanomsg has largely been superseded by NNG, and the documentation calls the C reference implementation sustaining-mode while describing NNG as the modern reimplementation.

Adoption history

nanomsg accumulated a broad binding ecosystem despite later being superseded: the upstream documentation lists bindings or implementations for C, C++, Clojure, D, Erlang, Fortran, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Lua, .NET, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Rust, Scheme, Smalltalk, and more.

GitHub API data fetched on 2026-07-01 showed 6,285 stars and 1,034 forks, reflecting historical mindshare. Homebrew's formula JSON generated on 2026-07-01 reported only 382 installs over 365 days and 181 installs-on-request over 365 days, which is consistent with a legacy library that remains packaged but is no longer the main recommendation.

How it is used

Users link against the C library and use its BSD-socket-like API to build message-oriented communication without a broker. Typical choices are REQREP for service clusters, PUBSUB for fanout, PIPELINE for fan-in/fan-out work distribution, BUS for many-to-many messaging, and IPC/TCP/WebSocket transports depending on deployment.

Package nerds often keep `nanomsg` around for older applications or language bindings that still target libnanomsg. New work should usually evaluate `nng` first because NNG keeps wire compatibility while adding the maintained API and implementation path.

Why package nerds care

nanomsg matters historically as a clean-room C rethinking of ZeroMQ-style scalability protocols and as the ancestor of NNG. Its Homebrew package is less about trend adoption and more about preserving buildability for software that already chose the nanomsg API or wire protocols.

Timeline

• 2012-10-10: nanomsg/nanomsg repository created on GitHub.
• 2018-04-12: nanomsg homepage update already pointed users toward NNG when possible.
• 2025-10-05: nanomsg 1.2.2 bug-fix release published.
• 2026-07-01: Homebrew formula JSON listed stable version 1.2.2 and 382 installs over 365 days.

Related projects

• ZeroMQ
• NNG
• mangos

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/nanomsg/nanomsg
• https://api.github.com/repos/nanomsg/nanomsg/releases?per_page=5
• https://formulae.brew.sh/api/formula/nanomsg.json
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/nanomsg
• https://github.com/nanomsg/nanomsg
• https://nanomsg.org/
• https://nanomsg.org/documentation-zeromq.html
• https://nanomsg.org/documentation.html
• https://nng.nanomsg.org/
• https://nng.nanomsg.org/RATIONALE.html