MacOS setup automation with Homebrew

Homebrew Setup Automation

Got a new MacBook and thinking about how to set up all the programming languages, packages, and IDEs? The followings scripts help you to automate your macOS setup.

no time? jump straight to the scripts

Prelude

A macOS setup script is a bash script for me. My script starts with the unofficial-bash-strict-mode and installs the xcode CLI:

set -euo pipefail 
IFS=$'\n\t' 
xcode-select --install

I set a SUDO_USER variable as next step, because some of the following installations require sudo :

SUDO_USER=$(whoami)

Package Manager Homebrew

I use Homebrew to install “stuff that I need”. Homebrew is an open source package management system for macOS. The script checks if HomeBrew is installed already. If not, a HomeBrew installation is executed.

if test ! $(which brew); then 
    /bin/bash -c \ "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)" 
fi

Next brew step is to upgrade brew and brew formulae with:

brew upgrade

CLI Tools

Get the latest mac CLI tools with:

PROD=$(softwareupdate -l | grep "\*.*Command Line" | head -n 1 | awk -F"*" '{print $2}' | sed -e 's/^ *//' | tr -d '\n') || true 
if [[ ! -z "$PROD" ]]; then 
    softwareupdate -i "$PROD" --verbose
fi

GNU utilities and tools

GNU core utilities and GNU tools installation happens with:

brew install coreutils 
brew install gnu-sed 
brew install gnu-tar 
brew install gnu-indent 
brew install gnu-which 
brew install findutils

There were changes over time how to install GNU core utilities and tools. ( Why was -with-default-names removed? is one example). I follow the brew recommendation to use the commands with their normal names and added the “gnubin” directory to my PATH:

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/findutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

You can find the gnubin recommendation as part of the brew info command for a specific formula e.g.:

$ brew info findutils 
findutils: stable 4.8.0 (bottled) 
Collection of GNU find, xargs, and locate https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/ /usr/local/Cellar/findutils/4.8.0_1 (31 files, 1.8MB) * 
  Poured from bottle on 2021-03-06 at 08:58:14 
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/findutils.rb 
License: GPL-3.0-or-later ==> Caveats All commands have been installed with the prefix "g". 
If you need to use these commands with their normal names, you 
can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:
PATH="/usr/local/opt/findutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH" ==> Analytics 
install: 14,333 (30 days), 55,191 (90 days), 125,336 (365 days) 
install-on-request: 14,145 (30 days), 54,422 (90 days), 123,262 (365 days) 
build-error: 0 (30 days)

My find setup is this:

$ find --version 
find (GNU findutils) 4.8.0 
Packaged by Homebrew 
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html. 
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. 
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by Eric B. Decker, James Youngman, and Kevin Dalley. Features enabled: D_TYPE O_NOFOLLOW(enabled) 
LEAF_OPTIMISATION FTS(FTS_CWDFD) CBO(level=2) 
$ which find 
/usr/local/opt/findutils/libexec/gnubin/find

JDK installation

Changing the Java version on Mac 11 BigSur was not as straight forward as I initially thought. Thats why is the Java JDK installation a dedicated block of brew formulae.

brew tap AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk 
brew install --cask adoptopenjdk 
brew install --cask adoptopenjdk8 
brew install --cask adoptopenjdk11 
brew install --cask adoptopenjdk14 
brew install --cask adoptopenjdk15

Formulae and Casks

With the previous installations and formulae in place, it is now time to install a batch of more formulae.

PACKAGES=(
    alfred 
    ... 
) 
brew install ${PACKAGES[@]}

Casks are extension[s] to Homebrew to install GUI applications such as gimp. I install casks the same way as packages/ formulae with the exception of using sudo because it is required by some casks.

CASKS=(
    atom
    ...
) 
sudo -u $SUDO_USER brew install --cask ${CASKS[@]}

More Formulae and Casks

My python setup is:

sudo -u $SUDO_USER pip3 install --upgrade pip 
sudo -u $SUDO_USER pip3 install --upgrade setuptools 
PYTHON_PACKAGES=(
    ipython
    virtualenv 
    virtualenvwrapper 
) 
sudo -u $SUDO_USER pip3 install ${PYTHON_PACKAGES[@]}

Scripts

The script that combines all code snippets above is osx_bootstrap.sh. I use osx_bootstrap_uninstall.sh to uninstall all installations osx_bootstrap.sh creates.

osx_bootstrap.sh

• https://codeberg.org/lotharschulz/gists/src/branch/main/osx_bootstrap.sh
• https://gist.github.com/lotharschulz/304243b8050801f1e9d9af7748b04eb5

osx_bootstrap_uninstall.sh

This script uninstalls formulae and casks installed with osx_bootstrap.sh.

• https://codeberg.org/lotharschulz/gists/src/branch/main/osx_bootstrap_uninstall.sh
• https://gist.github.com/lotharschulz/a6552c5edb4ad032c88d81f4809ae367

Originally published at https://www.lotharschulz.info.