Install Fest!!!

13 Apr 2015

I'm in the middle of a super long post about Rails models. It is quite involved and is taking a long time to write. So in the meantime, I present you with this relatively shorter blog post composed of mostly links.

I recently got a new MacBook Pro! So I spent a day installing and setting up my system for the perfect workflow. I experimented with different set ups, and ended up installing and un-installing several things. Also sometimes I'd install something, and realize I had to install something else first, etc. So here I will try to just show you how I would do it if I had to do it again, without all the mistakes.

The Terminal and the Shell

• install iTerm
• install Oh My ZSH because it's really cool looking!
  • move existing .bashrc content to .zshrc
  • move existing .bash_profile content to .zprofile
  • selectively add some of these shell aliases

Get ALL OF THE PACKAGE MANAGERZZZ!

• haha j/k, there are so many that it's confusing. I'll try to explain...
  • apt-get is a package manager for linux (don't need for my Mac--use homebrew instead)
  • homebrew is a package manager for osx (the command is just brew)
  • rubygems is a package manager for ruby (the command is gem)
  • npm is a package manager for JavaScript, you'll need to install node.js first
  • bower is a package manager for web packages (bootstrap, jquery, etc.)
• decidedly NOT package managers, but useful in some of the same ways:
  • wget can be used to download contents from FTP, HTTP and HTTPS (brew install wget)
  • curl is similar to wget, with some differences. (comes with Mac, I think)

tmux it up!

• install tmux: simple instructions
• optionally configure tmux based on this gist
• set up shell so that it starts tmux by default
• learn more about tmux

Git, GitHub, etc.

• set up XCode and git (I just typed git and it asked me if I wanted to install XCode etc., so easy)
• generate ssh key for github
• added alias for git hist
• optionally install GitX or Source Tree for GUI visualization

Set up localhost

• set up localhost with userdir
  • user pages at ~/Sites (accessible at localhost/~jimmy/...)
  • localhost at /Library/WebServer/Documents (or ~www/Documents) and accessible at localhost
  • had to do "chmod -R o+w ~www/Documents" in order to get write access to this folder
  • linked /wwwd to ~www/Documents so I can just do 'cd /wwwd' or '/wwwd' in zsh

Edit Them Texts!

• no need to install vim (comes with Mac), but it's nice to configure vim:
  • install pathogen which allows us to...
  • install Vim Sensible (universal set of defaults)
  • and Solarized (pretty colors!)
  • note: if your colors don't look right, add let g:solarized_termcolors = 256 to your ~/.vimrc file as detailed here (scroll down to "Add Solarized")
  • added some tab settings into .vimrc
• install Sublime Text and linked subl so it can be used on the command line

Set up Rails

• install rbenv, ruby, rails, mysql, and postgresql
• install heroku toolbelt

PHP, if you absolutely must

• PHP came with my Mac! (type php -v to see if you have it first) but I still had to configure it (scroll down to PHP).
• if you already installed Rails via instructions above, then you'll have MySQL... now all you'll need is phpmyadmin. Use these instructions (search for phpmyadmin)
• install PHPUnit (testing framework) with these instructions

Jekyll or this blog didn't happen!

• instructions here Jekyll

Other Super Useful Tools!

• install Pixel Winch SUPER easily measure anything in pixels
• install Dash read docs on Ruby, JavaScript, etc. even if you're offline
• install Divvy manage your windows
• install colordiff brew install colordiff and alias diff="colordiff" in ~./zshrc
• install 1Password for password management
• install todo.txt command line todo list tool!

Phew! Did I miss anything? Do you have any suggestions? Let me know!