Sebastian Motraghi on life, tech, et cetera

Getting a new Mac is a lot of fun, but it can be tedious to install all your favourite software packages, especially if you’re a developer who uses lots of them. There’s something to be said for keeping a list of URLs to your usual tools, so that you can set up a development environment faster. Also, who knows - perhaps it would be fun in the future to look back at your toolset and reminisce.

Without further ado, here is the software I’ve installed on my work-issued MacBook Pro:

The Basics

• Xcode
• OS X GCC Installer (As of this post Xcode no longer includes GCC, hence the need for this package)
• Git
• Homebrew

Homebrew Packages

• MySQL
• rbenv to manage Ruby versions
• ruby-build to install different Ruby versions
• rbenv-gemset gives rbenv gemset support
• MacVim
• s3cmd for interacting with S3 buckets
• ack is a great code search tool
• MongoDB
• z is cd with memory

Assorted Productivity

• Janus, a distribution of Vim tools
• oh-my-zsh, a distribution of zsh plugins
• Sequel Pro, a MySQL gui
• iTerm2, an excellent replacement for the standard terminal
• Quicksilver, the much-beloved application launcher
• VirtualBox
• Divvy for sizing windows nicely
• GitX, an excellent Git gui

Web Browsers

(I hardly use the non-Chrome browsers now that Web Inspector is so good, but you’ve gotta keep them around.)

• Google Chrome Beta (sometimes has fancier development tools than standard Chrome)
• Google Chrome Canary (an even more experimental Chrome build)
• Firefox
• Opera

Miscellaneous Steps

• Install the Consolas font
• Make zsh the default shell (using chsh)
• Set up vi keybindings for zsh
• Load up my vim config
• Disable OS X Lion’s annoying new features such as animated new windows, natural scrolling, and hidden scrollbars

That’s pretty much everything. I’m sure that in a few years this list will look incredibly outdated, but right now, these are my favourite utilities with which to make websites. Thanks for reading!