Setting up a new Mac as a web development workstation takes a little bit more work than just installing Textmate. These are my notes of the process (mainly for myself to make future installations faster).
The Basics
- Install TextMate
- Configure Finder to open ALL possible coding-related documents with TM
- Install also the terminal extention. Test by running
mate foo.txt
in terminal - Install or sync (with other machines) all necassary bundles. They are located in
~/Library/Application Support/Textmate
- Install Transmit
- Copy settings from other machines
~/Library/Preferences/com.panic.Transmit3.plist
- Sync bookmarks
- Copy settings from other machines
- Install SSHKeychain
- The Universal binary is there. Just not very well in sight.
- Install Subversion
- There are several pre-built packages available
- Install MySQL
- 5.x versions have nice .dmg + installer packages, installation is very easy
- Add
/usr/local/mysql/bin
to PATH - After installation, secure the initial installation
- Set password for root with
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('myelitepasswd');
- phpMyAdmin is a must-have. Best installed under
~/Sites
or/Sites
- PostgreSQL, if needed
- Marc Liyanages package + docs seem to be the easiest.
- See also ADC document PostgreSQL on Mac OS X
- Install PHP for bundled Apache 1.3
- Again, Marc Liyanages package is propably the easiest to set up
Setting Up Python
- Install Python 2.4+
- There are great pre-built binaries for Python 2.4 and 2.5
- Install some of the batteries that were forgotten in the “batteries included” philosophy:
- Install IPython
- Download the source and install. This is very easy for Python 2.4+
- Add
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin
to PATH and everything Just Works 🙂
Setting Up Django
I like to live dangerously. So:
svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ django_src ln -s /path/to/installation_directory/django_src/django /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django
That’s it. Django works. Now add export PYTHONPATH=/where/you/develop
to your .bash_profile
and finally copy django_src/django/bin/django-admin.py
to somewhere in your path (for example in /usr/local/bin
).
Localization issues
- Configure Terminal.app for Finnish chars
Are We There Yet?
Unfortunately that’s just the nerdy part of the setup-process. Next up is installing browsers, browser plugins (did I hear Firebug?) and all that jazz. I’m not going to get into those in this post, though.
I recenty listed all my favourite apps in iusethis.com (you can log in via OpenID). Please share your comments, suggestions or own favourite apps in the comments.