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Installing a macOS developer workstation


It is sitting on my desk, a shiny M4 MacBook. It wants to be configured. I can take the easy route and use the Migration Assistant. But that would carry forward all the cruft the various incarnations of the Migration Assistant have accumulated over the decade. So I went the hard way.

Manual with a dash of AppStore

First Stop: update macOS. In my case Sequoia 15.1 -> 15.6.1

Installation falls into 3 categories

  • command line tooling
  • settings & data
  • GUI applications

Followed by the reconfiguration of license keys

command line tooling

  • SdkMan: Install any software SDK
  • Java
  • Maven
  • Quarkus
  • Homebrew: Package manager for macOS
  • jq: parse json
  • orbstack: fast container runtime
  • starship: Proper prompts
  • node: JavaScript runtime
  • gh: GitHub CLI
  • gpg: Code signing
  • Rust: memory safe programming curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
  • Jetbrains Mono: Developer font
  • Google Drive: File Sync for Cloud

settings & data

  • Configurations (~/.config)
  • Git configurtion (~/.gitconfig and ~/.gitignore)
  • GitHub Tokens (~/.github)
  • Maven repos (~/.m2) big question: copy the repos or newly fetch
  • Network access (~/.netrc and ~/.npmrc)
  • Notes Data (~/Library/Application Support/HCL Notes Data' and ~/Library/Preferences/Notes Preferences)
  • PGP Keys (~/.gnupg)
  • Repositories (~/Code)
  • Shell config (~/.zshrc)
  • SSH keys and configuration (~/.ssh)
  • The shell script collection (~/bin)

GUI applications

As usual YMMV


Posted by on 29 August 2025 | Comments (0) | categories: Development macOS

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