Laptop

Laptop is a script to set up a macOS laptop for web and mobile development.

It can be run multiple times on the same machine safely. It installs, upgrades, or skips packages based on what is already installed on the machine.

NOTE: Please take a moment to read and customize this script before running. The packages below are helpful suggestions, not a prescriptive list.

Requirements

We support:

• macOS Sonoma (14.x) on Apple Silicon and Intel
• macOS Ventura (13.x) on Apple Silicon and Intel
• macOS Monterey (12.x) on Apple Silicon and Intel

Older versions may work but aren't regularly tested. Bug reports for older versions are welcome.

Install

Make sure you have git installed. On macOS, just typing git in the terminal should prompt you to install the Command Line Tools, but if not, xcode-select --install should do the trick.

Download the script:

curl --remote-name https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CoProcure/laptop/main/mac

Review the script (avoid running scripts you haven't read!):

less mac

Execute the downloaded script:

sh mac 2>&1 | tee ~/laptop.log

Optionally, review the log:

less ~/laptop.log

The script modifies your terminal configuration (e.g. to add NVM to $PATH). If you want to pick up those changes without opening a new terminal, source your config file like so (substituting .bashrc if you're using bash).

source ~/.zshrc

Debugging

Your last Laptop run will be saved to ~/laptop.log. Read through it to see if you can debug the issue yourself. If not, copy the lines where the script failed into a new GitHub Issue for us. Or, attach the whole log file as an attachment.

What it sets up

macOS tools:

• Homebrew for managing operating system libraries.

Unix tools:

• htop for viewing process information in the CLI
• OpenSSL for Transport Layer Security (TLS)
• The Silver Searcher for finding things in files
• tmux for saving project state and switching between projects
• Zsh as your shell
• Oh My Zsh framework for Zsh

Development tools:

• AWS CLI for interacting with the Amazon API
• Sentry CLI for interacting with the Sentry API

Programming languages, package managers, and configuration:

• Node.js and npm, for running apps and installing JavaScript packages. This installer uses nvm to manage Node versions.
• Ruby stable for writing general-purpose code. This installer uses rbenv to manage Ruby versions.
• Rosetta 2 for running tools that are not supported in Apple silicon processors

Databases:

• Postgres for storing relational data
• Redis for storing key-value data

Applications (optional, commented out by default):

• Google Chrome as a browser option, and for testing
• Slack for team communication
• iTerm2 for an improved terminal experience
• Sublime Text as a text editor option
• Sublime Merge as a merge/diff tool and as a companion to Sublime Text
• Visual Studio Code as a text editor option
• Insomnia for a convenient UI to experiment with API endpoints
• Flycut to expand the depth/history of your clipboard
• BitWarden to store passwords/secrets and share them with teammates
• Caffeine to keep your computer from falling asleep when you don't want it to
• TablePlus for connecting to local and remote relational DBs

It should take less than 15 minutes to install (depends on your machine).

Customize in ~/.laptop.local

Your ~/.laptop.local is run at the end of the Laptop script. Put your customizations there. For example:

#!/bin/sh

brew bundle --file=- <<EOF
brew "Caskroom/cask/dockertoolbox"
brew "go"
brew "ngrok"
brew "watch"
EOF

default_docker_machine() {
  docker-machine ls | grep -Fq "default"
}

if ! default_docker_machine; then
  docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default
fi

default_docker_machine_running() {
  default_docker_machine | grep -Fq "Running"
}

if ! default_docker_machine_running; then
  docker-machine start default
fi

fancy_echo "Cleaning up old Homebrew formulae ..."
brew cleanup
brew cask cleanup

if [ -r "$HOME/.rcrc" ]; then
  fancy_echo "Updating dotfiles ..."
  rcup
fi

Write your customizations such that they can be run safely more than once. See the mac script for examples.

Laptop functions such as fancy_echo and gem_install_or_update can be used in your ~/.laptop.local.

See the wiki for more customization examples.

Contributing

Edit the mac file. Document in the README.md file. Follow shell style guidelines by using [ShellCheck] and [Syntastic].

brew install shellcheck

Fork Information

This repo is a fork of one originally put together by Thoughtbot, and has been customized to meet some of the needs of Pavilion engineers while retaining some opinionation about handy tools and common configurations.

The original Thoughtbot project has some features that have been excluded in this fork, and that project may also continue to recieve updates that are of interest to some developers. For more info, visit the original Thoughtbot repo at https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop

License

Laptop is © 2011 thoughtbot, inc. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.

About thoughtbot

This repo is maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc. The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.

We love open source software! See our other projects. We are available for hire.