Mac Development Ansible Playbook

This playbook installs and configures most of the software I use on my Mac for web and software development. Some things in macOS are slightly difficult to automate, so I still have a few manual installation steps, but at least it's all documented here.

Installation

1. Ensure Apple's command line tools are installed (xcode-select --install to launch the installer).

2. Install Ansible:

   1. Run the following command to add Python 3 to your $PATH: export PATH="$HOME/Library/Python/3.8/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH"
   2. Upgrade Pip: sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip
   3. Install Ansible: pip3 install ansible

3. Clone or download this repository to your local drive.

4. Run ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml inside this directory to install required Ansible roles.

5. Run ansible-playbook main.yml --ask-become-pass inside this directory. Enter your macOS account password when prompted for the 'BECOME' password.

Note: If some Homebrew commands fail, you might need to agree to Xcode's license or fix some other Brew issue. Run brew doctor to see if this is the case.

Running a specific set of tagged tasks

You can filter which part of the provisioning process to run by specifying a set of tags using ansible-playbook's --tags flag. The tags available are dotfiles, homebrew, mas, extra-packages and osx.

ansible-playbook main.yml -K --tags "dotfiles,homebrew"

Overriding Defaults

Not everyone's development environment and preferred software configuration is the same.

You can override any of the defaults configured in default.config.yml by creating a config.yml file and setting the overrides in that file. For example, you can customize the installed packages and apps with something like:

homebrew_installed_packages:
  - cowsay
  - git
  - go

mas_installed_apps:
  - { id: 973130201, name: "Be Focused" }
  - { id: 1091189122, name: "Bear" }
  - { id: 585829637, name: "Todoist" }
  - { id: 1278508951, name: "Trello" }

npm_packages:
  - name: webpack

pip_packages:
  - name: mkdocs

configure_dock: true
dockitems_remove:
  - Launchpad
  - TV
  - Messages

dockitems_persist:
  - name: "Sublime Text"
    path: "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/"
    pos: 5

Any variable can be overridden in config.yml; see the supporting roles' documentation for a complete list of available variables.

Included Applications / Configuration (Default)

Applications (installed with Homebrew Cask):

• ChromeDriver
• Docker
• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Homebrew
• MacVim
• Slack
• Sublime Text
• Vagrant
• Iterm2
• Insomnia REST Client
• Discord
• Jetbrains Toolbox
• Loom
• Microsoft Edge
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Remote Desktop
• Miro
• MongoDB Compass
• Notion
• pgAdmin4
• Oracle JDK
• Postman
• Redis Insight
• Spotify
• Sqlite Studio
• Sublime Text
• VirtualBox
• Vagrant Manager
• Visual Studio Code
• VLC
• Zoom

Packages (installed with Homebrew):

• autoconf
• gettext
• git
• go
• rust
• python
• wget
• htop
• rustup-init
• tfenv
• ...

My dotfiles are also installed into the current user's home directory, including the .osx dotfile for configuring many aspects of macOS for better performance and ease of use. You can disable dotfiles management by setting configure_dotfiles: no in your configuration.

Finally, there are a few other preferences and settings added on for various apps and services.

Ansible for DevOps

Check out Ansible for DevOps, which teaches you how to automate almost anything with Ansible.

Author

This project is my version of Jeff Geerling mac setup.