brew install nginx fails to link

Question

I am attempting to install nginx using the brew package manager, but it fails to link. How can I fix this?

roc-web5537:Downloads cmuench$ brew install nginx
Warning: Your Xcode (4.3.3) is outdated
Please install Xcode 4.5.
==> Installing nginx dependency: pcre
==> Downloading ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-8.31.tar.bz2
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/pcre-8.31.tar.bz2
==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.31 --enable-utf8 --enable-unicode-properties --enable-pcregrep-libz --enable-pcregrep-libbz2
==> make test
==> make install
Warning: Could not link pcre. Unlinking...
Error: The `brew link` step did not complete successfully
The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local
You can try again using `brew link pcre'
==> Summary
/usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.31: 130 files, 3.2M, built in 18 seconds
==> Installing nginx
==> Downloading http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.2.4.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/nginx-1.2.4.tar.gz
==> Patching
patching file conf/nginx.conf
==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.2.4 --with-http_ssl_module --with-pcre --with-ipv6 --with-cc-opt=-I/usr/local/include --with-ld-opt=-L/usr/local/lib --conf-path=/usr/loca
==> make
==> make install
==> Caveats
In the interest of allowing you to run `nginx` without `sudo`, the default
port is set to localhost:8080.

If you want to host pages on your local machine to the public, you should
change that to localhost:80, and run `sudo nginx`. You'll need to turn off
any other web servers running port 80, of course.

You can start nginx automatically on login running as your user with:
  mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
  cp /usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.2.4/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
  launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist

Though note that if running as your user, the launch agent will fail if you
try to use a port below 1024 (such as http's default of 80.)
Warning: Could not link nginx. Unlinking...
Error: The `brew link` step did not complete successfully
The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local
You can try again using `brew link nginx'
Warning: /usr/local/sbin is not in your PATH
You can amend this by altering your ~/.bashrc file
==> Summary
/usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.2.4: 9 files, 952K, built in 9 seconds

Answer 1

I had this issue a few days ago with installation of Yeoman. It seems that some of the folders in /usr/local might not be owned by you and that can cause issues. In my case I had a couple of folders in /usr/local/ like that.

Go to /usr/local

cd /usr/local

Check who owns the folders

ls -l

Do the following for folders not owned by you (replacing sub-foldername with sub folders name obviously):

sudo chown $(whoami) /usr/local/<sub-foldername>

and then call

brew link pcre

It should link successfully.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This can sometimes happen if there area already files (or symlinks) with the same name. To force a link, you can use brew link -f pcre. If you want to see whether there are any files preventing the link, you can use brew link --dry-run pcre.

If there are no files listed by brew link --dry-run pcre, then it is likely that jwwishart's answer is the correct one.