Set up MacOS for Development

While everyone's requirements are unique, this page aims to collect information on frequently used MacOS products as well as how to install and configure them. It tries its best to remain agnostic of project and role so that it can be referenced elsewhere in Confluence.

Tip

If you are considering writing MacOS installation documentation for your project, consider writing it in a project agnostic way, hosting it here, and linking to it from your project

Local Admin Privileges

Admin privileges are managed through IT managed "CyberArk" tool. If you need elevated privileges on your local machine, contact IT and include your manager in the conversation.

VPN Access

Currently, JAX-IT provides and supports the GlobalProtect VPN client.

In most cases gaining access involves MS Authenticator app running on your phone.

You can contact IT with further questions and for installation details.

Frequently Used Tools

Package Management

• Homebrew

Terminals

• Hyper
  • More Modern
• Iterm2
  • More Traditional

CLI Tools and Configs

• ZSH
  • oh my zsh

Databases

• Posgress.app
  • Easily run and manage multiple versions if Postgresql Server on your Mac without reinstalling or complication configuration.

Ease of Use / Quality of Life

• spectacle
  • allows keyboard key config for moving and resizing windows
• tmux
  • Tmux is a terminal multiplexer. What is a terminal multiplexer? It lets you switch easily between several programs in one terminal, detach them (they keep running in the background) and reattach them to a different terminal. And do a lot more. See the manual.
  • It's like screen but has some additional features and is seeing more active development.
• witch
  • A better replacement for the default mac switcher (⌘-Tab ). It cost $10, but It's much nicer than the default, for example it shows each browser window as a separate process and can give a preview of the contents versus the default switcher which shows a single icon for Chrome for example.
• gw
  • Anywhere you happen to be on your project, you can run the Gradle tasks of your project by typing gw , regardless of whether you use the Gradle Wrapper in your project or not.

OS Independent Tools

See Development Tools and Operations Tools pages for tools that are not specific to MacOS.