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
Install SSHKeychain
- The Universal binary is there. Just not very well in sight.
Install Subversion
- There are several pre-built packages available
Install MySQL
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:
- python-markdown
- BeautifulSoup
- PIL, psycopg2, MySQLdb, python-dateutil, pysqlite2 (for 2.4)
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
- Jussis tutorial and another for .inputrc

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.