This post outlines how to set up a new MacOS High Sierra with sane default dotfiles and basic applications. Dotfiles are heavily influenced by Mathias Bynes. My own dotfiles can be found here.

Install brew

Homebrew is a package manager which greatly simplifies the set up and maintenance of packages.

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/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Clone the dotfiles

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git clone https://github.com/SirIle/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

Install the default packages with a bundle

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cd .dotfiles
brew bundle

Run RCM

RCM links the files in the .dotfiles folder to the user’s home directory. This way they can easily be maintained with git in their own folder without the home folder becoming too complex with .gitignore.

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rcup rcrc
rcup -f

Make GNU bash default shell

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echo "/usr/local/bin/bash" | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

Install nvm

Node Version Manager doesn’t support installation through Brew, so it’s better to install it from the command line.

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curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.9/install.sh | bash

For me it gave an error before I created the ~/.nvm directory first.

Add a ~/.extra to contain non-github stuff

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# Git credentials
# Not in the repository, to prevent people from accidentally committing under my name
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Ilkka Anttonen"
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
git config --global user.name "$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="ilkka.anttonen@accenture.com"
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL"
git config --global user.email "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL"
git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain