MacOS Configuration

These scripts will configure MacOS the way we want, including:

• Configuring OS preferences
• Installing applications
• Configuring applications

These scripts currently support macOS 15 (Sequoia). They have existed since at least MacOS 10.9 (Mavericks).

The scripts should all be idempotent. (That means that you can run them as many times as you want.)

Usage

0. Open a Terminal window.

1. Make sure git is installed.

git --version 2>/dev/null || echo 'Follow prompts to install command line developer tools. When it finishes, continue with the next step.'

2. Download the repo.
   • Use the HTTPS URL if SSH is not set up yet.
     • You'll want to switch to SSH if you want to commit changes.
       • Edit .git/config to change https://github.com/ to [email protected]:.

git clone https://github.com/boochtek/mac_config.git
cd mac_config

3. Edit ENV.sh to define various settings.
   • Be sure to read through and change any settings, as appropriate.
   • You can use vi or TextEdit instead of nano.
     • macOS has nano as a soft link to pico.

nano ENV.sh

4. Run the initialization.
   • This will install CLT, Homebrew, and my config files.

source ./init.sh

5. Set up the OS, hardware, and shell.

./os/ALL.sh
./hardware/ALL.sh
./shell/ALL.sh

6. Install web tools.

./web/ALL.sh

7. Install tools for development work.

./editors/ALL.sh
./dev/ALL.sh

8. Install the rest.

email/ALL.sh
work/ALL.sh

OLD!

Next, edit the config files:

• inventory_for_mac_serial_number.sh - add your computer to the list
• appstore_apps_to_install.yml - list of App Store apps to be installed

Theoretically, any of these scripts could be run independently. (Except for the util directory, which contains shared code imported by other scripts.) However, there are some (likely not adequately documented) dependencies. This order should work:

os/ALL.sh
hardware/ALL.sh
shell/ALL.sh
editors/ALL.sh
email/ALL.sh
web/ALL.sh
dev/ALL.sh

Many scripts will prompt for your password, as they require sudo to install various programs and settings. Others might ask for other passwords, for example your Mac App Store ID and password. You can just hit Enter on the Mac App store prompts, if you won't be installing anything from the Mac App Store.

Note that some of the scripts might take a while to run. For example, installing Xcode may take over an hour. The entire set of scripts will take several hours to run; many packages will be downloaded and compiled. Even if nothing new needs to be installed, the scripts could take about 8 minutes to run.

Note that some scripts will kill the Terminal.

Manual Steps

See MANUAL.md for steps that have not (yet) been automated.

Bash 3.2

Keep in mind that macOS ships with Bash 3.2. MacOS will likely never ship with anything newer, due to Apple's dislike of GPLv3. So we can't use any features introduced in Bash 4 or later:

• Associative arrays
• Case-modification operators for parameter substitution
• Globbing with ** to match recursively
• Escape codes in strings with \u and \U to represent Unicode characters
• Negative array indices

TODO: Downloading and Installing MacOS Sonoma

diskutil list external physical diskutil info -all

diskutil partitionDisk GPT JHFS+ 'Sonoma Installer'

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer
sudo '/Applications/Install macOS Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia' \
  --volume '/Volumes/Sonoma Installer'

Using VirtualOS to Test

I found VirtualOS, which will run MacOS inside a VM. This is great for testing these scripts.

You won't need to dedicate a lot of CPU to the VM, but you'll need a lot of disk space. You'll need at least 50 GB to install the OS, developer tools, and apps. You should be fine with 16 GB of RAM, maybe less. I'm currently working with 4 CPUs, 16 GB RAM, and 60 GB disk.