HomebrewのFormulaのコードを読みたい時には以下のコマンドで元のコードをカレントディレクトリに展開できる。
$ brew unpack <パッケージの名前>
実例
$ brew unpack tree
==> Unpacking tree to: /Users/metroid/tmp/tree-1.7.0
==> Downloading http://mama.indstate.edu/users/ice/tree/src/tree-1.7.0.tgz
Already downloaded: /Users/metroid/Library/Caches/Homebrew/tree-1.7.0.tgz
==> Verifying tree-1.7.0.tgz checksum
tar xzf /Users/metroid/Library/Caches/Homebrew/tree-1.7.0.tgz
$ ll
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 metroid staff 102B 12 16 00:42 ./
drwxr-xr-x+ 78 metroid staff 2.6K 12 16 00:42 ../
drwxr-xr-x 19 metroid admin 646B 12 16 00:42 tree-1.7.0/
helpによると以下のオプションがあるが、
$ brew help unpack
brew unpack [--git|--patch] [--destdir=path] formulae:
Unpack the source files for formulae into subdirectories of the current
working directory. If --destdir=path is given, the subdirectories will
be created in the directory named by path instead.
If --patch is passed, patches for formulae will be applied to the
unpacked source.
If --git is passed, a Git repository will be initialized in the unpacked
source. This is useful for creating patches for the software.
どちらもpatch作成用のオプションの為、ソースコードを確認する為には特に必要ない。