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brew install cortexlocal Homebrew formula metadata
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Install cortex with Homebrew
Long term storage for Prometheus. Version 1.21.1 via Homebrew; verified 2026-06-06.
install
Additional install commands
overview
Package summary
Long term storage for Prometheus
Project links
Commands and aliases
- cortex
history
Project history and usage
Cortex is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant long-term storage system for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics. It is normally deployed as a server-side observability backend rather than used as a local CLI tool.
Project history
The official Cortex documentation states that the project was started by Tom Wilkie and Prometheus co-founder Julius Volz in June 2016. The public GitHub repository was created later in 2016, and the README describes a system built for scale, high availability, multi-tenancy, and long-term object storage.
Adoption history
Cortex's adoption history is tied to Prometheus remote write and cloud-native observability. The official documentation's further-reading section traces public talks from PromCon 2016 through KubeCon sessions, and lists managed or production-oriented material from Grafana Labs, AWS, CNCF, and other operators.
How it is used
Operators deploy Cortex as single-binary or microservices components. Prometheus instances push samples via remote write, while Cortex distributes, ingests, stores, and queries data across long-term storage backends such as S3, GCS, Swift, and Azure.
Why package nerds care
Cortex matters to package and infrastructure maintainers because it turns Prometheus from a single-node time-series database into a multi-tenant distributed system. Packaging is only a small part of the story; configuration, Kubernetes deployment, storage backends, ring state, and service topology dominate real-world distribution.
Timeline
- 2016: Cortex project started in June by Tom Wilkie and Julius Volz.
- 2016: Public GitHub repository created in September.
- 2018: Official documentation lists CNCF and KubeCon materials presenting Cortex as scalable Prometheus.
- 2026: Official GitHub releases include the v1.21.x series.
Related projects
- Related projects include Prometheus, OpenTelemetry Metrics, Thanos, Grafana Mimir, Alertmanager, and cloud object stores used for long-term metrics storage.
Sources
security posture
Risk level: orange
formula declares a Homebrew service.
Risk classifier
orange risk · medium confidence · infrastructure
Why
- formula declares a Homebrew service
Signals
- metadata:service
Install behavior
- No Homebrew post-install hook is recorded in formula metadata.
- Formula metadata declares a service or daemon block.
- Homebrew bottle metadata is available for 6 platform targets.
- Build metadata lists 1 build dependencies.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
cortex | cli | global executable |
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 generated2026-07-08
manager version1.21.1
manager updated2026-06-06
local dataok
upstreamcurrent
latest detectedv1.21.1
https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex
- okNo freshness warnings were generated.
install metadata
Package metadata
| Package key | brew:cortex |
|---|---|
| Version | 1.21.1 |
| Package manager | Homebrew |
| Package manager page | https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/cortex |
| Homepage | https://cortexmetrics.io/ |
| Repository | https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex |
| Upstream docs | https://cortexmetrics.io/docs |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Source archive | https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex/archive/refs/tags/v1.21.1.tar.gz |
| Last updated | 2026-06-06T00:57:42Z |
| Pulse | updated |
| Build dependencies | go |
| Bottle | available (on arm64_linux, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_tahoe, sonoma, x86_64_linux) |
| Homebrew post-install | not defined |
| Service | declared |
registry facts
Source database details
| Source Database | Homebrew formula API |
|---|---|
| Tap | homebrew/core |
| Full Name | cortex |
| Version Scheme | 0 |
| Revision | 0 |
| Head Version | HEAD |
| Conflicts With |
|
| Bottle Stable Root URL | https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core |
| Deprecated | no |
| Disabled | no |
| Keg Only | no |
| URL Keys |
|
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
- av.db category and tag curation
- cross-ecosystem install command graph
- curated package history
- package relationship graph
- package version freshness
- package-page enrichment