My macOS Setup & Dotfiles

Your dotfiles are how you can setup and maintain your Mac. It takes the effort out of installing everything manually. Feel free to copy parts for your own dotfiles and personalise to your own needs. Enjoy! 😄

Setting up your Mac

1. Update macOS to the latest version

sudo softwareupdate -i -a

# Reboot after update
sudo softwareupdate -i -a --reboot

2. Install macOS Command Line Tools

xcode-select --install

The Xcode Command Line Tools includes git and make (not available on stock macOS).

3. Restore (or generate) the GPG key

On old system, create a backup of a GPG key
- gpg --list-secret-keys
- gpg --export-secret-keys {{KEY_ID}} > /tmp/private.key
On new system, import the key:
- gpg --import /tmp/private.key
Delete the /tmp/private.key on both sides

4. Setup Git

# Set the git author email and username
email="EMAIL"
username="USERNAME"
gpgkeyid="KEY_ID"

# Configure Git
git config --global user.email "${email}"
git config --global user.name "${username}"
git config --global user.signingkey "${gpgkeyid}"
git config --global commit.gpgsign true
git config --global core.excludesfile $HOME/.gitignore

# Create a Code directory for all our work
mkdir $HOME/Code

# Generate a new key
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "${email}" -f github_rsa

# Start ssh-agent and add the key to it
eval $(ssh-agent -s)
ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/github_rsa

# Display the public key ready to be copy pasted to GitHub
cat $HOME/.ssh/github_rsa.pub

Add the generated key to GitHub

5. Finally clone the repository

mkdir $HOME/.dotfiles
git clone git@github.com:zahav/macos-dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

Note: you can use a different location than ~/.dotfiles if you want. Just make sure you also update the reference in the .zshrc file.

6. Setup the development environment

cd $HOME/.dotfiles
sh install.sh

Your Mac is now ready to use!