macOS as Unix Workstation 2022

I'm a die hard Linux user, but in November 2022, I had to use a Mac for some work. This document describes how I turned a vanilla install of the latest macOS into a powerful Unix workstation.

Homebrew 🍺

This is AFAIK the best package manager for Unix tools on macOS. Install it with:

$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Terminal 💻

I've grown very fond of the kitty terminal. I believe it's the best terminal around, it even beats iTerm2 😃. It strikes a great balance between features (24 bit colours, Unicode, multiplexer, view pictures on remote servers, remote server clipboard integration++) and speed. Install it with:

$ curl -L https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/installer.sh | sh /dev/stdin

Set Caps Lock as Ctrl

Or else, I'll go seriously mad.

Head over to System preferences, then Keyboard and finally Modifier Keys.

Unix shell environment

Git

$ brew install git

ZSH 🐚

I prefer the ZSH shell over BASH:

$ brew install zsh
$ brew install zsh-autosuggestions
$ brew install zsh-completions
$ brew install fzf

BASH 🐚

You should install a newer version of bash. Although I use ZSH for my interactive shell, I still do lots of shell programming in BASH. The version of bash that comes with macOS is very old, 3.2.57, so installing a newer bash with brew:

$ brew install bash

Verify that the new version is correctly installed and available in your PATH by running:

$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 5.2.26(1)-release (aarch64-apple-darwin22.6.0)
Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://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.

Coreutils 🧰

GNU coreutils, sed, awk, getopt and grep are superior to the ancient BSD tools that ship with macOS.

$ brew install coreutils
$ brew install gawk
$ brew install gsed
$ brew install gnu-getopt
$ brew install grep

Now, ensure that the GNU versions of these tools take precedence over the old BSD versions that macOS ships with. To do this, you must edit the settings file for your shell.

If you don't know which one you're using, type:

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh

With that, you know which .bashrc of .zshrc to edit. Add the following:

export PATH=\
/usr/local/bin:\
/usr/local/Cellar/gnu-sed/4.9/libexec/gnubin:\
/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:\
/usr/local/opt/gawk/bin:\
/usr/local/opt/gnu-getopt/bin:\
/usr/local/opt/grep/libexec/gnubin:\
/usr/local/opt/openjdk@11/bin:\
$PATH

As you can see from the above paths, gnused isn't packaged like the others, and doesn't provide a bin directory outside the cellar.

After this change to your PATH variable, you must reload the settings:

$ source .bashrc # For BASH shells
$ source .zshrc  # For ZSH shells

Alternatively, start a new terminal window.

PGP 🔒

$ brew install gnupg

Java ☕

$ brew install openjdk@11

Ensure this JDK's binaries are first in PATH, add these to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

export PATH=/usr/local/opt/openjdk@11/bin:$PATH

JSON

Installing jq allows you to query JSON documents, a bit like what XPath on XML files.

$ brew install jq

Installing json_xs lets you convert between YAML and JSON. For instance, you can use this to do look ups in YAML documents using jq. json_xs doesn't exist in Homebrew, but you should be able to install it from CPAN using cpm (untested):

$ brew install cpm
$ cpm install JSON::XS
$ cpm install YAML::XS::LibYAML

Video meetings 📽️

My company uses Microsoft Teams, so that' the one to get.

Update 2022-11-22: Per told me Teams can also be installed with brew like so:

$ brew install --cask microsoft-teams

Fonts 🖊️

Download the excellent Adobce Source Code Pro font, unzip it and drag and drop the files to the Font Book:

A better top

btop is my favourite resource monitor these days, install it with:

$ brew install btop

Emacs 🐂

Install Emacs from emacsformacosx.com, this gives you a good, up to date Emacs build.

Note, this build doesn't provide native compilation (aka "gccemacs"), nor the non-blocking JSON processing done in this emacs-lsp fork.

Update 2022-11-25: It's also possible to get Emacs with brew. Note, after testing this on a fresh Mac, I the --cask emacs --with-native-comp --with-cocoa options didn't work, so had to just issue the below command which gives a non-graphical Emacs (to get the full package, use the emacsformacosx link above):

$ brew install emacs

Spell check 📖

$ brew install aspell

That's it!

Your shiny macOS machine is now a good, modern Unix workstation with most of the same tools and versions as GNU/Linux distributions ship with.

Happy hacking!