Set Up Your Mac
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Set Up Your Mac

For Software Development

About the Book

NOTE: This book is in an early "scrapbook" stage. This is why it is currently priced at the absolute minimum allowed by Leanpub (4.99). Investing in the book at this stage will help support my writing efforts, and save you 95% of the full price (29.99).

I suppose I have always been an Apple fanboy of sorts. I grew up in an environment entirely devoid of their products, wishing for the day I would be able to afford my own Mac. From the moment I laid my hands on my first MacBook back in 2010, a beautiful friendship sprung and continues until today.

Macs are the closest to having a powerful UNIX machine with the macOS ecosystem's added media and productivity boost. Naturally, this makes the Mac a desired companion for many software developers and IT professionals.

While the default setup provides a good starting point, a few tweaks can turn any Mac into a robust development and productivity workstation.

This book collects more than a decade of my own experience setting up Macs for software development. It's a process that goes on all the time as the ecosystem evolves, so this book is not an end destination but a continuous journey.

About the Author

Preslav Rachev
Preslav Rachev

A seasoned software developer with about a decade of professional experience behind my back. My first real touch with programming dates about a decade further back. Throughout my career, I have had the chance to learn a lot, and I believe that the time has come for me to contribute my knowledge back to the developer community.

Table of Contents

  • 1 Introduction
    • To the reader
    • Foreword
    • About the author
    • What’s next
    • A note about M1
  • 2 Set Up Your Developer Environment
    • Set Up Your Terminal
      • iTerm 2
      • iTerm Tips
    • Oh My Zsh
      • Install Oh My Zsh
    • Fly through your command line history with fzf
      • Installing fzf
    • Install Xcode Command Line Tools (CLT)
    • Set Up Package Management
      • Install Homebrew
      • Install and manage multiple versions of SDKs without Homebrew
    • Manage Secrets Reliably
  • 3 Window Management
    • Align multiple app windows with Spectacle
    • Re-map keys for easier switching between app windows
  • 4 Get the most out of your developer tooling
    • Git
      • Be more productive with Git aliases
    • Source Code Editors and IDEs
      • Visual Studio Code
  • 5 App Index
    • A
      • asdf
    • C
      • coconutBattery
    • F
      • fzf (fuzzy-finder)
    • I
      • iTerm 2
    • K
      • KeePassXC

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