Student Laptop Requirements and Setup

Table of Contents

• Laptop Machine
  • Versions of Mac OS(X)
• Administrater Rights
• Login and Shell
• BASH Configuration
  • .bash_profile
  • .bashrc
  • Why Two Configuration Files?
• Other Useful Hacks

Laptop Machine

We highly recommend a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air with at least 4GB of memory (8GB is even better) and 100GB of free storage space.

We also recommend being on a recent version of MacOSX (a version released in the last 12 months) because many of the 3rd party and open source software that we will be installing and using requires a recent version of MacOSX.

Versions of Mac OS(X)

• Mac OS X 10.0 – code name "Cheetah", released in 2001
• Mac OS X 10.1 – code name "Puma", released in 2001
• Mac OS X 10.2 – also marketed as "Jaguar", released in 2002
• Mac OS X Panther – version 10.3, released in 2003
• Mac OS X Tiger – version 10.4, released in 2005
• Mac OS X Leopard – version 10.5, released in 2007
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard – version 10.6, released in 2009
• Mac OS X Lion – version 10.7, released in 2011
• OS X Mountain Lion – version 10.8, released in 2012
• OS X Mavericks – version 10.9, released in 2013
• OS X Yosemite – version 10.10, released in 2014
• OS X El Capitan – version 10.11, released in 2015
• Mac OS Sierra – version 10.12, released in 2016

You can check your Mac Laptop via the desktop "Apple" menu:

The overview tab will show you the version of MacOSX you are running as well as your display, processor, and the amount of main memory (RAM) installed in your laptop.

The storage tab will show you how much available storage you have. We will be installing a lot of software over the 12 week class so you will need approximately 100GB of available storage space.

Administrater Rights

You will need to have administrative rights on your laptop. You can check this by going to System Preferences => Users and Groups and selecting your account on the left side of the dialog. The option Allow user to administer this computer should be checked:

Login and Shell

We will be using the Terminal a lot in this class to install software, create directories, manage GIT repositories, and perform other tasks. The Terminal will launch your default shell which should be the BASH shell.

To check your default shell, open the Terminal app (you can use Spotlight) and at the prompt type:

echo $SHELL

And you should get the following response:

/bin/bash

BASH Configuration

We will be using two files to configure our BASH Shell: .bash_profile and .bashrc.

Below are examples of these files.

.bash_profile

echo "Hello from .bash_profile"

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}'

[[ -r ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc

.bashrc

echo "Hello from .bashrc"

Why Two Configuration Files?

You can put configuration settings in either .bash_profile or .bashrc. The only difference between these two files is that:

• .bash_profile is executed when you login.
• .bashrc is used for non login shells (i.e. shells that are launched to run a script or a background process).

Since we often put settings in .bashrc that we also want to be set in a login session, we source the .bashrc file from the .bash_profile file.

Other Useful Hacks

• Add OneTab Chrome Plugin
• Setup a nice bash prompt
  • Liquid Prompt
• Setup some Git aliases for the longer Git commands (via ~/.gitconfig), for example:

[alias]
  g  = log --graph --all --branches --decorate --pretty=format:'[%C(auto)%h%Creset][%C(cyan)%an %ar%Creset]%C(auto)%d%Creset %s %C(auto)%Creset'
  ls = log --stat --all --decorate