I recently opened a box containing my new MacBook Pro. All of my files are synced/backed up with Dropbox, allowing me to install Dropbox on the new computer and leave it for a couple of hours. The MBP is my development machine, so I needed all of my tools installed with the ability to update them with ease. In the past, I used MacPorts to take care of my MySQL, Memcached, and Ruby installions and it worked just fine. This time around however, I wanted something new and fun. Homebrew.

Homebrew is a new package manager for OS X. Unlike Fink or MacPorts, Homebrew integrates with the core operating system, reducing the number of extra libraries to install etc. Another neat feature is the ability to write software package recipes in Ruby, awesome.

Here are some raw installation instructions (clean system). I like to keep everything under user ownership to make life more enjoyable, say no to sudo.

You will need the latest version of xcode, you can get it here. After the installation is complete, you may continue.

sudo mkdir /usr/local sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local curl -Lsf http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tarball/master | tar xvz -C /usr/local --strip 1

Homebrew is installed and "/usr/local" is already part of your path, now to give it a go.

brew install git brew update brew install wget brew install mysql brew install memcached brew install postgres brew install redis brew install mongodb brew list

My homebrew experience has been a happy one, I don't see myself using MacPorts or Fink again.

Homebrew documentation can be found here.

RVM (Ruby Version Manager) takes care of managing my multiple Ruby and Gem versions. Leaving the OS X default installation of ruby alone, RVM installs to a users home directory, changing the required system variables. Just how Homebrew is under user ownership, RVM is quite happy running this way as well and so am I.

To install RVM, do the following.

mkdir -p ~/.rvm/src/ && cd ~/.rvm/src && rm -rf ./rvm/ && git clone --depth 1 git://github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm.git && cd rvm && ./install

Add the following line to the end of your .profile or .bash_profile or .bashrc file (be sure to edit your user name).

if [[ -s /Users/YOURUSERNAME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ]] ; then source /Users/YOURUSERNAME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ; fi

Try out RVM.

rvm install 1.8.7 rvm install 1.9.2 rvm --default 1.9.2 ruby -v which ruby gem install rails

Pretty neat eh? (I'm Canadian, it's ok)

RVM documentation can be found here.