Table of Contents
I make it a practice to blow away previous versions of the OS and start with a clean install each time there's a major update. Why do this?
- In my experience, clean installs result in a more stable system.
- I try to maintain a system that is easily bootstrapped, and this is pretty much the only way to reliably test that process.
- I want to make sure that everything that I really care about on my computer is replicated someplace, either using a cloud service (mostly Dropbox), or in git repositories. This forces the issue.
Once again, homebrew is the foundation of my setup. I used homebrew to install not only command line programs and languages (python, R), but also as many desktop apps as I could (Chrome, x11) that would otherwise have been installed manually by hunting down an installer. Each time I go through this, homebrew takes care of more and more apps.
Somewhat glossed over here are manual steps used to transfer non-public dotfiles, credentials, etc. Here's a partial list of files and directories that I copied directly from my old laptop:
tar -cf dotfiles.tar .Xmodmap .gitconfig .gnupg .pypirc .ssh
Note that none of these steps require an Apple ID - I held off on signing in until the very end just to see if it was possible.
system settings
turn off spelling autocorrect
System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Text tab --> unselect "Correct spelling automatically" and others
unmap Control + left,right
I use Control plus the left and right arrow keys to move between windows in emacs and tmux.
System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Shortcuts --> uncheck mission control: move left/right a space
Turn on FileVault
System Preferences --> Security & privacy --> FileVault
I used a recovery key option rather than iCloud for my work machine, iCloud for personal
Developer tools
Pretty much the first thing that needs to happen. This can be done from the command line:
xcode-select --install
homebrew
Homebrew no longer requires user-ownership of /usr/local, so things are pretty easy now:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" brew doctor
Many packages are installed later with additional elaboration or in as dependencies for other applications; here are some more or less standalone packages that I routinely install.
brew install git && \ brew install wget && \ brew install autojump && \ brew install gcc && \ brew install graphviz && \ brew install latex2rtf && \ brew install pandoc && \ brew install tmux && \ brew install tree && \ brew install fd && \ brew install xsv
homebrew API token
Apparently lots of requests to GutHub via homebrew can hit a rate limit. There's a higher limit if you create an API token. See https://gist.github.com/christopheranderton/8644743
Here's the url for the token creation dialog:
https://github.com/settings/tokens/new?scopes=&description=Homebrew
Make sure that all 'scopes' are unchecked. Once you generate the token, add to your shell profile:
export HOMEBREW_GITHUB_API_TOKEN=token_here
python
I'm in the midst of the transition from python2 to python3, so as I wrote this it wasn't clear which packages (if any) I would need to install to the system. I decided to go with mostly python3, and really tried to limit these to utilities that are used outside of the context of a virtualenv.
Use homebrew - see https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/Homebrew-and-Python.md
dependencies
Run brew info python for required and optional dependencies
for pkg in sphinx-doc pkg-config readline sqlite gdbm berkeley-db@4 tcl-tk; do brew install $pkg; done
python2
brew install python@2 --with-tcl-tk /usr/local/bin/pip2 install -U pip setuptools virtualenv wheel
python3
Note that "python" corresponds to the python3 homebrew recipe.
brew install python --with-tcl-tk /usr/local/bin/pip3 install -U pip wheel
A limited selection of packages - better to use virtualenvs!
pip3 install ansible pip3 install csvkit pip3 install pgcli
scons
Note that scons wants to install man pages to /usr/local/man, which is owned by root. You'll need to do this first:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/man sudo chown $(whoami) /usr/local/man pip3 install scons
emacs
Install latest emacs binary from http://emacsformacosx.com/
Emacs needs a few homebrew packages
brew install libressl brew install aspell brew install gpg
Check out my .emacs.d and run setup scripts.
cd ~ git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:nhoffman/.emacs.d.git
For elpy:
cd ~/.emacs.d bin/venv.sh
zsh
Install zsh with Homebrew
brew install zsh
Change shell to zsh
sudo -s echo /usr/local/bin/zsh >> /etc/shells exit chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh $USER
Install my dotfiles (relevant only to me)
cd ~ git clone git@bitbucket.org:nhoffman/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles/mac/install.py
desktop apps
Homebrew installs desktop apps too!
brew cask install dropbox brew cask install sizeup brew cask install dash brew cask install hipchat brew cask install google-chrome brew cask install java brew cask install mactex brew cask install texmaker brew cask install wkhtmltopdf brew cask install firefox brew cask install docker
Some of the above (eg, sizeup, dropbox, dash) require licenses and credentials that must be installed interactively.
iTerm2
brew cask install iterm2
Update a few settings.
Preferences –> Profiles –> Keys and do these things:
- select "Left/right option key acts as": +Esc
- + –> Keyboard shortcut "OPT+<left arrow>": Send Escape sequence "b"
- + –> Keyboard shortcut "OPT+<right arrow>": Send Escape sequence "f"
Default appearance:
- Preferences –> Profiles –> Colors –> Load Presets –> Light Background
- Preferences –> Profiles –> Text –> Change Font –> 14 point
postgresql
brew cask install postgres
This installs multiple versions of postgres. You'll need to add the path to the CLI for the version you want to use to your PATH, eg:
export PATH=/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/9.6/bin:$PATH
R
Again, using homebrew.
brew install openblas brew install pcre brew install R
Some packages that I know I'll need:
R --slave << EOF
packages <- c("lattice", "RSQLite", "latticeExtra", "argparse", "data.table", "tidyverse")
install.packages(packages, repos="http://cran.fhcrc.org/", dependencies=TRUE, clean=TRUE, Ncpus=4)
EOF
Wow, this takes a long time!
And while I'm at it:
brew cask install rstudio
X11
install Xquartz
brew install caskroom/cask/xquartz
X11 key bindings so that the option key is used for Meta. Not so relevant any more now that I rarely use emacs via X11 for remote sessions.
cat > ~/.Xmodmap <<EOF clear Mod1 clear Mod2 keycode 63 = Mode_switch keycode 66 = Meta_L add Mod1 = Meta_L add Mod2 = Mode_switch EOF
virtualbox and vagrant
brew cask install virtualbox brew cask install vagrant brew cask install vagrant-manager
On High Sierra, a kernel extension signing issue caused an error: instructions for a workaround are here: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/issues/39369
After virtualbox is installed, go to preferences, and change default machine folder to ~/VirtualBox
- available vagrant images:
install an ubuntu16.04 VM
see https://app.vagrantup.com/ubuntu/boxes/xenial64
mkdir -p ~/vagrant/xenial64 cd ~/vagrant/xenial64 vagrant init ubuntu/xenial64 vagrant up