My Local Setup

Local Setup for my Mac

Homebrew, SDKMan, and Git have been my absolute favorite moving buddies whenever I needed to hop from different computers, whether it was for the start of an internship or career, or because I had knocked my personal Mac over from a jazzercize session (theoretically for me, my sister actually did that for hers).

Homebrew is a gift for installing stuff on a Mac: Brew Documentation.

SDKMan is a great tool I use to manage Java stuff because it gives me the greatest amount of control over switching versions in the most intuitive way: SDKMan Documentation.

Git is as every developer knows a very popular (the most popular) way to use version control for a project. It is what allows you to time travel with your code, to go back to the past to reference non-buggy code or to create a new timeline by branching off and making the needed changes.

Setting up for local dev can be a real PIA, but these tools make it SOOO much easier! Note that this is a heavily Mac based setup because of the use of Homebrew (we are mostly an Apple family). As I move from computer to computer, I will cherish these favorite moving buddies.


First thing to do of course is to install Homebrew on the Mac:

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

My Brew Installs

For Python

  • brew install python

    *Adjust path to use Python 3 instead of Python 2

    • To view where python is installed

      • ls -l /usr/local/bin/python*
    • change default python symlink to the version you want to use

      • ln -s -f /usr/local/bin/<python3 version> /usr/local/bin/python
    • close terminal and check that you now are using Python3 as the default:

      • python -V : should return Python
    • Source
  • brew install anaconda

    • Anaconda Setup
    • Edit ~/.zshrc
    • Add export PATH="/usr/local/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"
    • Restart terminal or use source ~/.zshrc to reload your shell environment
    • Then you will be able to run jupyter notebook or python and you will be using the Anaconda distribution
    • Source

For Web Services

  • brew install nginx
  • brew install mysql

    • To secure db: mysql_secure_installation
    • For basic connect and run mysql.server start
    • Then mysql -uroot
    • Source

For Java : handling JDK + JRE

For Clojure

  • Be sure Java is installed first since Clojure has a dependency on the JDK
  • brew install leiningen

For NodeJS

  • brew install node

Node Version Manager

  • Not a package from Homebrew but equally as easy to install
  • Similarly to SDKMan NVM allows you to switch between different Node versions
  • curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.3/install.sh | bash
  • Use curl command from NVM link

For Docker

  • brew cask install docker
  • Installs Docker Desktop app
  • Start Docker app and follow the same routine as if you installed the Mac .dmg from Docker: Reference

My SDKMan Setup

  • SDKMan allows you to install Java stuff similarly but also painlessly switch between versions (comes in handy for using current or past JDKs)
  • sdk install java 11.0.8.j9-adpt
  • sdk install maven 3.6.3
  • sdk install gradle 6.6.1
  • Easy install of Java and Gradle versions