macOS
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brew install numbatprovider-native install command
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Install numbat with Homebrew
Statically typed programming language for scientific computations. Version 1.23.0 via Homebrew; verified 2026-06-14.
install
Additional install commands
overview
Package summary
Statically typed programming language for scientific computations
Project links
Commands and aliases
- numbat
history
Project history and usage
Numbat is David Peter's Rust-based, statically typed language and calculator for scientific computations with first-class physical units. Its public positioning is deliberately narrower than a general computer algebra system: the project emphasizes unit-aware calculations, physical dimensions as types, a large unit/constant standard library, and an interactive terminal workflow.
Project history
The public release trail visible through GitHub releases starts with v1.6.0 on September 20, 2023, and the author's 2023 'Introducing Numbat' article explains the central design idea: values such as months, years, lengths, speeds, and other quantities carry physical dimensions that the type checker can enforce. The repository is maintained by David Peter and licensed under Apache-2.0 OR MIT.
Adoption history
Numbat is a niche but visible developer/science CLI rather than an infrastructure dependency. The GitHub project page showed about 2.6k stars and 104 forks during this research, and Homebrew's formula page listed 1,467 installs over 365 days on July 1, 2026. Its availability through Homebrew, crates.io, Linux distributions, Scoop, Nix, MacPorts, and other package managers gives it unusually broad packaging coverage for a specialized calculator language.
How it is used
Package nerds use Numbat when a unit conversion is too semantic for bc, Python, or a normal calculator: examples from the README include converting speeds, angles, mixed imperial lengths, and time durations; defining ad-hoc units; and relying on the standard library for physical constants and functions. The `NUMBAT_MODULES_PATH` escape hatch and `init.nbt` customization matter because the unit system itself is written in Numbat and can be extended without changing the binary.
Why package nerds care
The interesting packaging angle is that Numbat behaves like a calculator, a REPL, and a small domain language at once. It is the sort of package people install directly as a command-line tool, not as a transitive dependency, and its prelude/modules packaging is part of the user experience because users may inspect or override unit definitions.
Timeline
- 2023: David Peter publishes the Numbat type-system introduction.
- 2023-09-20: GitHub release v1.6.0 appears in the public release API.
- 2026-02-08: GitHub release v1.23.0 is published.
Related projects
- sharkdp/insect
- Qalculate!
- WolframAlpha
Sources
security posture
Risk level: yellow
generalized runtime or code generation signal.
Risk classifier
yellow risk · medium confidence · runtime
Why
- generalized runtime or code generation signal
Signals
- text:programming language
Install behavior
- No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.
Recommended review
Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.
executables
Installed executables
| Command | Kind | Exposure | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
numbat | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
freshness
Version and freshness
These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.
page generated2026-08-03
manager version1.23.0
manager updated2026-06-14
local dataunknown
upstreamnot available
latest detectednot detected
- okNo freshness warnings were generated.
install metadata
Package metadata
| Package key | brew:numbat |
|---|---|
| Version | 1.23.0 |
| Package manager | Homebrew |
| Homepage | https://numbat.dev/ |
| Repository | https://github.com/sharkdp/numbat |
| Last updated | 2026-06-14T14:47:58+02:00 |
| Pulse | updated |
| Bottle | not recorded |
| Service | none declared |
source trail
Generated from repository data
This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.
Combined YAML source
View the package source record on GitHub.
Used sources
- Geiger risk classifier
- Nucleus package database
- curated package history
- pkgdb category and tag curation