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Don't install server-side stuff directly on your Mac. If you are working on server-side projects, then use virtual machines. Vagrant in combination with a con

Don't install server-side stuff directly on your Mac. If you are working on server-side projects, then use virtual machines. Vagrant in combination with a configuration management system (e.g. Puppet) is very helpful here. Use Homebrew to install command-line tools. Use Homebrew Cask to install GUI tools that aren't on the Mac App Store. Lots of people find it useful to check their environment's configuration files into version control – check out popular dotfiles repositories. On OS X, this also includes scripts that call `defaults write` for integration with OS X preferences. As far as multiple unix users are concerned, just create them and use them. There's no special trick you need.

keslag 12y ago
Vagrant has been a much bigger time sink for me than benefit. The ssh-agent never works while provisioning for nix servers, only during ssh (which I can do using the -- -A regardless). It often gets confused and the machines need to be destroyed and re-created after 1-2 provisioning attempts. Packers (The tool used to create vagrant boxes) lack of support for winrm on windows systems has also been a bone of contention. It requires a number of workarounds (like installing open-ssh) on the windows VM that in no way would be viable on a production windows server. And that divergence allows for the "It works on my machine" bugs which is really the whole point of using Vagrant. I use chef for provisioning, and Vagrant also downloads the chef provisioner every single provision, I suspect it does this with puppet as well, so if you're developing on the go and need to re-provision, you're either out of luck or require an unlimited data plan. Homebrew Cask also has no oversight for breaking changes, so use this only as a convenience, not a tool to be relied upon. It frequently looses track of applications, and I can't even find where it decides to put some error logs if they're created at all. Some of these problems could be my lack of experience in operations, but the documentation for these is far from complete. A VM with snapshots and a good backup strategy will serve you better in the short term. This changes if you're attempting to support multiple dev, but if you're a lone guy, then snapshots are far far less buggy.
- JimDabell 12y ago
  I haven't experienced any of that, but then I wouldn't use it for Windows in the first place and it doesn't sound like the kind of thing the OP is doing either. The Salt provisioner doesn't bootstrap Salt every time, so it may be a bug with the Chef provisioner rather than something that's true of all provisioning. Isn't Chef installed by default on most base boxes anyway though? It sounds like you've hit an edge case that you can work around by installing Chef in your base box. Snapshots and backing up VMs sounds a lot more hassle than Vagrant. Same goes with Cask – I've never had it lose track of applications. It's hard to see how this could happen, as this mechanic is pretty simple – if it's in the directory, it's present, otherwise it's absent.
- Quequau 12y ago
  > Vagrant has been a much bigger time sink for me than benefit. This has been my experience as well... and I would really, really like to have a system in place where I could painlessly spin up VMs to do development in, so that I could leave my Mac as is.
  - mateuszf 12y ago
    It's called Docker.
    - keslag 12y ago
      Docker just spins up a VM on OS X with boot2docker so you don't get any real benefit here.
      - ithkuil 12y ago
        Yep, although it creates only one you can run a bunch of containers in it. It feels almost as a native support, but the hack is betrayed by the networking setup. I wish it would be possible to just expose ports on the real localhost.
        keslag 12y ago
kelv 12y ago
recommend homebrew cask too, but there's also http://getmacapps.com http://getmacapps.com for the slightly less power user...kind of like a GUI for homebrew cask
pbowyer 12y ago
As I understand it App Store apps are 'sandboxed' - so is there any way to use this to create light, snapshottable containers isolated from the main filesystem? I've been using Vagrant and Virtualbox, but the lack of speed is painful. And the overhead with a couple running at once. It just strikes me as odd that Ruby has rbenv, Python has virtualenv - but there's nothing language agnostic and native to the Operating System, that I can use to try out new languages/tools, and nuke if all goes wrong without messing up my OS X filesystem (or versions of installed programs).

keslag 12y ago

Vagrant has been a much bigger time sink for me than benefit. The ssh-agent never works while provisioning for nix servers, only during ssh (which I can do using the -- -A regardless). It often gets confused and the machines need to be destroyed and re-created after 1-2 provisioning attempts. Packers (The tool used to create vagrant boxes) lack of support for winrm on windows systems has also been a bone of contention. It requires a number of workarounds (like installing open-ssh) on the windows VM that in no way would be viable on a production windows server. And that divergence allows for the "It works on my machine" bugs which is really the whole point of using Vagrant. I use chef for provisioning, and Vagrant also downloads the chef provisioner every single provision, I suspect it does this with puppet as well, so if you're developing on the go and need to re-provision, you're either out of luck or require an unlimited data plan. Homebrew Cask also has no oversight for breaking changes, so use this only as a convenience, not a tool to be relied upon. It frequently looses track of applications, and I can't even find where it decides to put some error logs if they're created at all. Some of these problems could be my lack of experience in operations, but the documentation for these is far from complete. A VM with snapshots and a good backup strategy will serve you better in the short term. This changes if you're attempting to support multiple dev, but if you're a lone guy, then snapshots are far far less buggy.

JimDabell 12y ago
I haven't experienced any of that, but then I wouldn't use it for Windows in the first place and it doesn't sound like the kind of thing the OP is doing either. The Salt provisioner doesn't bootstrap Salt every time, so it may be a bug with the Chef provisioner rather than something that's true of all provisioning. Isn't Chef installed by default on most base boxes anyway though? It sounds like you've hit an edge case that you can work around by installing Chef in your base box. Snapshots and backing up VMs sounds a lot more hassle than Vagrant. Same goes with Cask – I've never had it lose track of applications. It's hard to see how this could happen, as this mechanic is pretty simple – if it's in the directory, it's present, otherwise it's absent.
Quequau 12y ago
> Vagrant has been a much bigger time sink for me than benefit. This has been my experience as well... and I would really, really like to have a system in place where I could painlessly spin up VMs to do development in, so that I could leave my Mac as is.
- mateuszf 12y ago
  It's called Docker.
  - keslag 12y ago
    Docker just spins up a VM on OS X with boot2docker so you don't get any real benefit here.
    - ithkuil 12y ago
      Yep, although it creates only one you can run a bunch of containers in it. It feels almost as a native support, but the hack is betrayed by the networking setup. I wish it would be possible to just expose ports on the real localhost.
      - keslag 12y ago

kelv 12y ago

recommend homebrew cask too, but there's also http://getmacapps.com http://getmacapps.com for the slightly less power user...kind of like a GUI for homebrew cask

pbowyer 12y ago

As I understand it App Store apps are 'sandboxed' - so is there any way to use this to create light, snapshottable containers isolated from the main filesystem? I've been using Vagrant and Virtualbox, but the lack of speed is painful. And the overhead with a couple running at once. It just strikes me as odd that Ruby has rbenv, Python has virtualenv - but there's nothing language agnostic and native to the Operating System, that I can use to try out new languages/tools, and nuke if all goes wrong without messing up my OS X filesystem (or versions of installed programs).