Setting up Mac#
This page describes the basic steps to set up your Mac for computational research.
Installing a terminal app#
A fair amount of our work needs to be performed using command line (CLI) tools in a terminal. You may want to install a more powerful and easy-to-use terminal than the macOS default Terminal App.
iTerm2 is a great alternative. Follow the instructions on its website to download and install it.
Setting up developer environment#
Open iTerm2 and type the below command (without $) to set up your macOS CLI developer environment.
$ xcode-select --install
Installing homebrew#
Homebrew is a package manager that simplifies the installation of other software (mostly CLI tools and libraries) on macOS. To install, do
$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
After installation, you can use the brew command to install other packages, e.g.,
$ brew install wget
See this tutorial for a practical guide to Homebrew.