This document describes how I set up my developer environment on a new MacBook or iMac. We will set up Node (JavaScript) environments, mainly for JavaScript development. Even if you don't program in it, it is good to have them as many command-line tools use one of them.
The document assumes you are new to Mac. The steps below were tested on OS X Mountain Lion.
- System update
- System preferences
- Google Chrome
- iTerm2
- Homebrew
- Git
- Sublime Text
- Vim
- Node.js
- JSHint
- Oh My Zsh
First thing you need to do, on any OS actually, is update the system! For that: Apple Icon > Software Update...
If this is a new computer, there are a couple tweaks I like to make to the System Preferences. Feel free to follow these, or to ignore them, depending on your personal preferences.
In Apple Icon > System Preferences:
- Trackpad > Tap to click
- Keyboard > Key Repeat > Fast (all the way to the right)
- Keyboard > Delay Until Repeat > Short (all the way to the right)
- Dock > Automatically hide and show the Dock
Install your favorite browser, mine happens to be Chrome.
Download from www.google.com/chrome. Open the .dmg file once it's done downloading (this will mount the disk image), and drag and drop the Google Chrome app into the Applications folder (on the Mac, most applications are installed this way). When done, you can unmount the disk in Finder (the small "eject" icon next to the disk under Devices).
Since we're going to be spending a lot of time in the command-line, let's install a better terminal than the default one. Download and install iTerm2 (the newest version, even if it says "beta release").
In Finder, drag and drop the iTerm Application file into the Applications folder.
You can now launch iTerm, through the Launchpad for instance.
Let's just quickly change some preferences. In iTerm > Preferences..., under the tab General, uncheck Confirm closing multiple sessions and Confirm "Quit iTerm2 (Cmd+Q)" command under the section Closing.
In the tab Profiles, create a new one with the "+" icon, and rename it to your first name for example. Then, select Other Actions... > Set as Default. Finally, under the section Window, change the size to something better, like Columns: 125 and Rows: 35.
When done, hit the red "X" in the upper left (saving is automatic in OS X preference panes). Close the window and open a new one to see the size change.
Package managers make it so much easier to install and update applications (for Operating Systems) or libraries (for programming languages). The most popular one for OS X is Homebrew.
An important dependency before Homebrew can work is the Command Line Tools for Xcode. These include compilers that will allow you to build things from source.
Now, Xcode weights something like 2GB, and you don't need it unless you're developing iPhone or Mac apps. Good news is Apple provides a way to install only the Command Line Tools, without Xcode. To do this you need to go to http://developer.apple.com/downloads, and sign in with your Apple ID (the same one you use for iTunes and app purchases). Unfortunately, you're greeted by a rather annoying questionnaire. All questions are required, so feel free to answer at random.
Once you reach the downloads page, search for "command line tools", and download the latest Command Line Tools (OS X Mountain Lion) for Xcode. Open the .dmg file once it's done downloading, and double-click on the .mpkg installer to launch the installation. When it's done, you can unmount the disk in Finder.
Note: If you are running OS X 10.9 Mavericks, then you can install the Xcode Command Line Tools directly from the command line with $ xcode-select --install, and you don't have to go through the download page and the questionnaire.
Finally, we can install Hombrew! In the terminal paste the following line (without the $), hit Enter, and follow the steps on the screen:
$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
One thing we need to do is tell the system to use programs installed by Hombrew (in /usr/local/bin) rather than the OS default if it exists. We do this by adding /usr/local/bin to your $PATH environment variable:
$ echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
Open a new terminal tab with Cmd+T (you should also close the old one), then run the following command to make sure everything works:
$ brew doctor
To install a package (or Formula in Homebrew vocabulary) simply type:
$ brew install <formula>
To update Homebrew's directory of formulae, run:
$ brew update
Note: I've seen that command fail sometimes because of a bug. If that ever happens, run the following (when you have Git installed):
$ cd /usr/local
$ git fetch origin
$ git reset --hard origin/master
To see if any of your packages need to be updated:
$ brew outdated
To update a package:
$ brew upgrade <formula>
Homebrew keeps older versions of packages installed, in case you want to roll back. That rarely is necessary, so you can do some cleanup to get rid of those old versions:
$ brew cleanup
To see what you have installed (with their version numbers):
$ brew list --versions
What's a developer without Git? To install, simply run:
$ brew install git
When done, to test that it installed fine you can run:
$ git --version
And $ which git should output /usr/local/bin/git.
Let's set up some basic configuration. Download the .gitconfig file to your home directory:
$ cd ~
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nicolashery/mac-dev-setup/master/.gitconfig
It will add some color to the status, branch, and diff Git commands, as well as a couple aliases. Feel free to take a look at the contents of the file, and add to it to your liking.
Next, we'll define your Git user (should be the same name and email you use for GitHub and Heroku):
$ git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"
$ git config --global user.email "your_email@youremail.com"
They will get added to your .gitconfig file.
To push code to your GitHub repositories, we're going to use the recommended HTTPS method (versus SSH). So you don't have to type your username and password everytime, let's enable Git password caching as described here:
$ git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain
Note: On a Mac, it is important to remember to add .DS_Store (a hidden OS X system file that's put in folders) to your .gitignore files. You can take a look at this repository's .gitignore file for inspiration.
Oh My Zsh is installed by running one of the following commands in your terminal. You can install this via the command-line with either curl or wget.
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
sh -c "$(wget https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"
Oh My Zsh comes with a load of plugins to take advantage of. You can take a look in the plugins directory and/or the wiki to see what's currently available.
If you spot a plugin (or several) that you would like to use with Oh My Zsh, you will need to edit the ~/.zshrc file. Once you open it with your favorite editor, you'll see a spot to list all the plugins that you'd like Oh My Zsh to load in initialization.
For example, this line might begin to look like...
plugins=(git bundler osx rake ruby)With the terminal, the text editor is a developer's most important tool. Everyone has their preferences, but unless you're a hardcore Vim user, a lot of people are going to tell you that Sublime Text is currently the best one out there.
Go ahead and download it. Open the .dmg file, drag-and-drop in the Applications folder, you know the drill now. Launch the application.
Note: At this point I'm going to create a shortcut on the OS X Dock for both for Sublime Text and iTerm. To do so, right-click on the running application and select Options > Keep in Dock.
Sublime Text is not free, but I think it has an unlimited "evaluation period". Anyhow, we're going to be using it so much that even the seemingly expensive $70 price tag is worth every penny. If you can afford it, I suggest you support this awesome tool. :)
Just like the terminal, let's configure our editor a little. Go to Sublime Text 2 > Preferences > Settings - User and paste the following in the file that just opened:
{
"font_face": "Consolas",
"font_size": 13,
"rulers":
[
79
],
"highlight_line": true,
"bold_folder_labels": true,
"highlight_modified_tabs": true,
"tab_size": 2,
"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
"word_wrap": false,
"indent_to_bracket": true
}Feel free to tweak these to your preference. When done, save the file and close it.
I use tab size 2 for everything except Python and Markdown files, where I use tab size 4. If you have a Python and Markdown file handy (or create dummy ones with $ touch dummy.py), for each one, open it and go to Sublime Text 2 > Preferences > Settings - More > Syntax Specific - User to paste in:
{
"tab_size": 4
}Now for the color. I'm going to change two things: the Theme (which is how the tabs, the file explorer on the left, etc. look) and the Color Scheme (the colors of the code). Again, feel free to pick different ones, or stick with the default.
A popular Theme is the Soda Theme. To install it, run:
$ cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 2/Packages/
$ git clone https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ "Theme - Soda"
Then go to Sublime Text 3 > Preferences > Settings - User and add the following two lines:
"theme": "Soda Dark.sublime-theme",
"soda_classic_tabs": true
Restart Sublime Text for all changes to take effect (Note: on the Mac, closing all windows doesn't close the application, you need to hit Cmd+Q).
The Soda Theme page also offers some extra color schemes you can download and try. But to be consistent with my terminal, I like to use the Solarized Color Scheme, which already ships with Sublime Text. To use it, just go to Sublime Text 2 > Preferences > Color Scheme > Solarized (Dark). Again, this is really according to personal flavors, so pick what you want.
Sublime Text 2 already supports syntax highlighting for a lot of languages. I'm going to install a couple that are missing:
$ cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Packages/
$ git clone https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script-tmbundle CoffeeScript
$ git clone https://github.com/miksago/jade-tmbundle Jade
$ git clone https://github.com/billymoon/Stylus.git Stylus
$ git clone -b SublimeText2 https://github.com/kuroir/SCSS.tmbundle.git SCSS
$ git clone https://github.com/nrw/sublime-text-handlebars Handlebars
Sublime Text is very extensible. For now we'll leave it like that, we already have a solid installation. To add more in the future, a good place to start would be to install the Sublime Package Control.
Although Sublime Text will be our main editor, it is a good idea to learn some very basic usage of Vim. It is a very popular text editor inside the terminal, and is usually pre-installed on any Unix system.
For example, when you run a Git commit, it will open Vim to allow you to type the commit message.
I suggest you read a tutorial on Vim. Grasping the concept of the two "modes" of the editor, Insert (by pressing i) and Normal (by pressing Esc to exit Insert mode), will be the part that feels most unnatural. After that it's just remembering a few important keys.
Vim's default settings aren't great, and you could spend a lot of time tweaking your configuration (the .vimrc file). But if you're like me and just use Vim occasionally, you'll be happy to know that Tim Pope has put together some sensible defaults to quickly get started.
First, install pathogen.vim by running:
$ mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \
curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim
Then create a file ~/.vimrc (you can use $ subl ~/.vimrc), and paste in the following:
execute pathogen#infect()
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on
And finally, install the Vim "sensible defaults" by running:
$ cd ~/.vim/bundle
$ git clone git://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible.git
With that, Vim will look a lot better next time you open it!
Install Node.js with Homebrew:
$ brew update
$ brew install node
The formula also installs the npm package manager. However, as suggested by the Homebrew output, we need to add /usr/local/share/npm/bin to our path so that npm-installed modules with executables will have them picked up.
To do so, add this line to your ~/.path file, before the export PATH line:
PATH=/usr/local/share/npm/bin:$PATHOpen a new terminal for the $PATH changes to take effect.
We also need to tell npm where to find the Xcode Command Line Tools, by running:
$ sudo xcode-select -switch /usr/bin
(If Xcode Command Line Tools were installed by Xcode, try instead:)
$ sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
Node modules are installed locally in the node_modules folder of each project by default, but there are at least two that are worth installing globally. Those are CoffeeScript and Grunt:
$ npm install -g coffee-script
$ npm install -g grunt-cli
To install a package:
$ npm install <package> # Install locally
$ npm install -g <package> # Install globally
To install a package and save it in your project's package.json file:
$ npm install <package> --save
To see what's installed:
$ npm list # Local
$ npm list -g # Global
To find outdated packages (locally or globally):
$ npm outdated [-g]
To upgrade all or a particular package:
$ npm update [<package>]
To uninstall a package:
$ npm uninstall <package>
##JSHint
JSHint is a JavaScript developer's best friend.
If the extra credit assignment to install Sublime Package Manager was completed, JSHint can be run as part of Sublime Text.
Install JSHint via npm (global install preferred)
$ npm install -g jshint
Follow additional instructions on the JSHint Package Manager page or build it manually.