How to prepare your fresh Mac for software development | Hacker News Reader

How to prepare your fresh Mac for software development

medium.com

28 pointsmtkocak36 comments

Step one is to install Xcode or the Xcode command line tools. These are necessary for brew to build from source.

Once brew and clang are working it's mostly a matter of installing packages as on a normal Unix system. Definitely want to install command-line git.

Of course what this guide is missing is how to set up the runtime for whatever environment/framework you're using. For Rails you'll want rvm/rbenv; for Node, nvm. You also may wish to test everything in a Linux VM that mirrors prod, in which case configuring your Mac to transfer or share the code jn your src directory with the VM is necessary.

Getting the actual dependencies of your code up and running is generally the most crucial -- and most difficult -- part of prepping any new dev box.

Using Docker, one could have various images made for whichever runtime environments you require. This way, no dependencies for running/compiling code need to be installed on a dev machine other than Docker and can be easily used from any machine with Docker, avoiding the hassle of setting up all of these dependencies.

> Let's start with a list of essential things you need.

> ...

> Github — The essential version control system

git is the VCS. GitHub is a service ( website ) that provides git repositories.

I find it interesting that she installed GitHub Desktop but was using `git clone` later.

OP, If you are looking at this, learn that GitHub Desktop is supposed to provide a graphical UI for some basic git operations (such as git clone).

You can install and use git without installing GitHub Desktop.

Isn't git preinstalled in macOS?

The one pre-installed is way outdated. Better off install the latest version using homebrew.

The one shipped by Apple on OS X 10.11.6 is 2.7.4, which was released in March this year. That's hardly "way outdated".

> Better off install the latest version using homebrew.

The Git project provides package to install binaries for OSX. Homebrew's name would be more accurate to the reality of the product if it's name was bathtub-whiskey.

They updated it, following this incident:

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2016/04/17/unprotected/

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2016/05/05/xcode/

Note that Git ships with Xcode, not part of OS X itself. Xcode 7.3.1 updated Git to v2.7.4. Xcode 8, likely to GM in the next month or two, includes Git v2.8.4.

Is git changing that fast? I'm not sure I've ever upgraded git on any machine.

You are misinformed.

Thx. Updated the article.

Here's mine: https://github.com/pathikrit/mac-setup-script/blob/master/se...

I like homebrew-bundle [1]. It lets me list all of the apps I use in a text file and install them with a single command.

You can also run `brew bundle --cleanup` to purge your system of apps that you no longer need (as long as you installed them with homebrew/homebrew-bundle in the first place).

- [1] https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle

I like laptop from thoughtbot. It is a good starting point.

https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop

This one is better: http://sourabhbajaj.com/mac-setup/

Or if you like a fully scripted setup: https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop

Setup for Homebrew, GitHub Desktop and an IDE? This seems excessively basic...

Not to nitpick but TextMate and VS Code aren't even 'real' IDEs. They're text editors. The IDE aspect is added by installing plugins which a) mostly depend on the the needs of the user, and b) she didn't showed.

I write mostly for beginners. Yeah those are not ides. I mostly prefer PHPStorm but I will talk about those on some next article.

For <a very small subset of development>. When I get a new box I install among other things, OCaml and Forth...

This is a good rant tho' https://medium.com/my-name-is-midori/software-development-is...

For setting up a Mac, I can't recommend a .osx file highly enough. Dot files in general make setting up a new computer really easy, especially when combined with homebrew's cask. I've been able to setup a familiar dev environment on a new machine in less than 15 min because I've maintained dotfiles. It's a relatively small time investment upfront and the payoff can be massive, especially if anything ever goes wrong on your main machine.

I'm sorry I'm not totally sure I know what you are talking about. Care to link?

Scripting out your favorite settings, here’s an example: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos

I use something similar, along with dotbot (https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot) to wire up other application’s settings files. There’s lots of good examples around to steal and tweak.

Mackup (https://github.com/lra/mackup) is a great tool for this. Beware, however, that it creates symlinks in place of your existing files. So if you decide you don't like it, run the uninstall command before removing the Mackup folder or bad things will happen (I learned from experience).

Here's an example (not mine): https://github.com/necolas/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/osxdefau...

This does seem a little basic but I forked and rewrote another setup guide specifically for front-end developers using a Mac.

https://github.com/asuh/front-end-osx

Apologies, but I can't help myself:

http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2011/03/osx-unsuitable-w...

But the problem ranted about above doesn't just apply to Macs. One of the most common things I see on our support system is the dev team who've built their app on Windows + XAMPP then wonder why stuff doesn't work the same when they deploy to their production CentOS box.

If you're writing any server side code you should be developing on a machine (or VM) that closely matches your production targets. Then there's no surprises.

Man up and learn Emacs.

Things like this make me die a little inside every time:

> Open a fresh terminal and enter this command: /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/in...

why?

As others have said, blinding executing a ruby script directly out of a GH repo is risky (to put it mildly). Sure, you have to have some trust in the whole infrastructure at some point, but the number of times I've seen this type of thing blindly posted and followed boggles my mind. Here is a post talking about the issue and pointing out non-malicious issues: https://www.seancassidy.me/dont-pipe-to-your-shell.html

You’re executing a script directly off of a git repo. There’s a lot of trust involved there. One sneaky pull-request away from an exploit.

That said, I do it all the time like everyone else. :)

That's the official installation instruction of homebrew. http://brew.sh/

But anyway I got your point.

That doesn't make it any less terrible, but honestly who expects more from homebrew, as a project it's hardly the pinnacle of engineering excellence.

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