Azure App Service Mobile Apps is a platform as a service (PaaS) offering that brings a rich set of capabilities to mobile apps. You can incorporate any of its pieces to accelerate your mobile application development. Why programmers think Mac OS X is the best OS to use. Dmitri Zagidulin, a distributed systems engineer, sums up the change: 'Go to a tech conference or developer event. Xamarin is the preferred mobile app development tool for native applications. It reuses business logic layers and data access across platforms. It is widely used to build apps for iOS, Windows, and Android app development. Features: It is a mono framework which allows communication with the API of mobile devices.
A guide to setting up an Apple Mac for DevOps and software development. This is current for macOS 10.14 (Mojave).
Whats A Good Mac For Mobile App Development System
Log in once, run Software Update, and ensure that the operating system is at the latestpoint release. After all of the updates have been applied, restart the computer.
Log in again and create an Admin user account for your use. If other people will beusing the machine, create Standard accounts for them. Log out of the initial account,and log in to the Admin account that you have just created.
Always log in with this new Admin account. The benefit of leaving the initial accountuntouched is that it ensures that you always have a working account to login with.
Admin accounts have sudo privileges: All Admin accounts on a Mac may use sudo to runcommand-line utilities with administrative (root) privileges.
You should also find an external hard drive. Begin using Time Machine as soon aspossible, as it provides the most easy method for backing up your system.
Configuring The Trackpad
To make the trackpad behave correctly, ensure that these settings are enabled:
- System Preferences > Trackpad > Tap to click
- System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options… >Enable dragging
Creating a Private Applications Folder
Once you have logged into your account, create a folder called Applications withinyour home folder. Whenever you are prompted to drag a new applications into the globalApplications folder, put it in this private Applications folder instead. Someapplications have to be installed to global folders, but in most cases you can keep thesystem directories clean by storing third-party products in your private Applicationsfolder.
Securing the Safari Browser
Whether or not you regularly use Safari, you should open it once, and adjust thesettings in case that you use it later.
First, choose Safari > Preferences > General and deselect the option Open “safe” files after downloading.
Second, go to Safari > Preferences > Search. Decide which search engine that you want to use. Ensure that Safari Suggestions is not enabled.
Then, check the plug-in settings. Go to Safari > Preferences > Security > Plug-in Settings… and review the plug-ins and settings.
Apple provide quite secure operating systems, but unfortunately convenience has won outover security in a few places. These can easily be corrected by changing a few settings.If you are using a laptop then you should probably make all of these changes as soon aspossible.
Basic Settings
Select System Preferences > Security & Privacy, and set the following:
- Under General, set require a password after sleep or screen saver begins toimmediately
- Click Advanced… and select Require an administrator password to accesssystem-wide preferences
- Under Firewall, click Turn Firewall On.
- Under Privacy, select Analytics and ensure that the options are not enabled.
Disable Spotlight
By default, Spotlight sends queries to Apple. Unless you want this feature, turn it off.
Select System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, and ensure that Spotlight Suggestions is not enabled.
Enable File Vault NOW
Current versions of macOS include File Vault 2, a full-disk encryption system that haslittle in common with the much more limited File Vault 1. You should enable File VaultNOW, because it is the only protection against anyone with physical access to yourcomputer. All other security measures will be completely bypassed if someone withphysical access simply restarts the computer with a bootable pen drive.
File Vault really is secure, which means that you can permanently lose access to yourdata if you lose the passwords and the recovery key.
Set a Firmware Password
Set a password to stop access to theRecovery mode. Otherwise, any maliciousindividual can change the firmware settings to boot from a disc or device of theirchoosing. If you did not enable File Vault, then the attacker will have complete accessto all of the files on the system.
Apple Knowledge Base article HT204455provides full details.
Setting Up Time Machine Backups
Time Machine is simple to set up. Just take a suitably large external hard drive, plug itin to your Mac, and agree when prompted. The drive setup process will reformat the harddrive. The only settings that may need to change are the exclusions.
Choose System Preferences > Time Machine, and click Options. Add to the exclusionslist any folders that contain ISO disk images, virtual machines, or database files (suchas Entourage). If the external hard drive is short of space, exclude the Systemfolder.
The first step is to install a compiler. The easiest way to install one is with theXcode Command Line Tools package.
Once you have the compiler that is provided by Xcode, you can useHomebrew to install everything else that you need.
Getting Xcode
Apple now provide the Xcode suite as a free download from the App Store. To installXcode Command Line Tools, install Xcode from the App Store, then open a Terminal windowand enter the following command:
Setting Up Homebrew
Homebrew provides a package management system for macOS, enabling youto quickly install and update the tools and libraries that you need. Follow theinstructions on the site.
You should also amend your PATH, so that the versions of tools that are installed withHomebrew take precedence over others. To do this, edit the file .bashrc inyour home directory to include this line:
You need to close all terminal windows for this change to take effect.
To check that Homebrew is installed correctly, run this command in a terminal window:
To update the index of available packages, run this command in a terminal window:
Once you have set up Homebrew, use the brew install command to add command-line software to your Mac, and brew cask install to add graphical software. For example, this command installs the Slack app:
Installing the Git Version Control System
The Xcode Command Line Tools include a copy of Git, which isnow the standard for Open Source development, but this will be out of date.
To install a newer version of Git than Apple provide, use Homebrew. Enter this command in a terminal window:
If you do not use Homebrew, go to the Web site and follow thelink for Other Download Options to obtain a macOS disk image. Open your downloadedcopy of the disk image and run the enclosed installer in the usual way, then dismountthe disk image.
Always set your details before you create or clone repositories on a new system. Thisrequires two commands in a terminal window:
The global option means that the setting will apply to every repository that you workwith in the current user account.
To enable colors in the output, which can be very helpful, enter this command:
Text Editors
Installations of macOS include older command-line versions of bothEmacs and vim, as well asTextEdit, a desktop text editor. TextEdit is designed for light-weight word processing,and has no support for programming. Add the code editors or IDEs that you would prefer to use.
If you do not have a preferred editor, consider using a version of Visual Studio Code. Read the next section for more details.
To work with a modern Vim editor, install Neovim.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a powerful desktop editor for programming, with built-in support for version control and debugging. The large range of extensions for Visual Studio Code enable it to work with every popular programming language and framework. It is available free of charge.
The Microsoft releases of Visual Studio Code are proprietary software with telemetry enabled by default. To avoid these issues, use the packages that are provided by the vscodium project instead.
Once you have installed Visual Studio Code or VSCodium, read this article for more information about using the editor.
Neovim
If you would like a modern Vim editor with a good default configuration, set up Neovim.
Setting The EDITOR Environment Variable
Whichever text editor you choose, remember to set the EDITOR environment variable inyour ~/.bashrc file, so that this editor is automatically invoked by command-linetools like your version control system. For example, put this line in your profile tomake Neovim (nvim) the favored text editor:
Setting Up A Directory Structure for Projects
To keep your projects tidy, I would recommend following theGo developer conventions. These guidelines may seemslightly fussy, but they pay off when you have many projects, some of which are ondifferent version control hosts.
First create a top-level directory with a short, generic name like code. By default Gouses a directory called go, but you can change that when you set up a Go installation.
In this directory, create an src sub-directory. For each repository host, create asubdirectory in src that matches your username. Check out projects in the directory.The final directory structure looks like this:
Creating SSH Keys
You will frequently use SSH to access Git repositories or remote UNIX systems. macOSincludes the standard OpenSSH suite of tools.
OpenSSH stores your SSH keys in a .ssh directory. To create this directory, run these commands in a terminal window:
To create an SSH key, run the ssh-keygen command in a terminal window. For example:
Use 4096-bit RSA keys for all systems. The older DSA standard only supports 1024-bitkeys, which are now too small to be considered secure.
JavaScript Development: Node.js
Homebrew provides separate packages for each version of Node.js.To ensure that you are using the version of Node.js that you expect, specify the versionwhen you install it. For example, enter this command in a Terminal window to install theNode.js 12, the current LTS release:
Add the bin/ directory for this Node.js installation to your PATH:
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If you need yarn, enter this command in a Terminal window toinstall it:
Go Development
Use Homebrew to install Go:
This provides the standard command-line tools for Go.
The current version of Go includes support for dependency management with modules. Use modules for new projects. Some existing projects still use dep, or an older tool.
Setting a GOPATH
Current versions of Go do not require a GOPATH environment variable, but you should set it to ensure that third-party tools and Terminal auto-completion work correctly.
Set a GOPATH environment variable in your ~/.bashrc file:
Grabber app for mac. Otherwise, it’s got just about everything you could want in a screenshot app, which makes it a powerful companion for anyone who needs to take a ton of screen captures. The selection tools is hyper accurate, with pixel-perfect zoom for selecting boundaries easily.The apps only downside is a lack of application window captures, which you’ll still need to do with the default app. SkitchEven if is getting a little long in the tooth, it’s still one of the best image annotation apps available.
Then, add this to your PATH:
Close the Terminal and open it again for the changes to take effect.
Java Development: AdoptOpenJDK
Which Version of Java?
Many vendors provide a JDK. Avd-native app mac. To avoid potential licensing and support issues, use the JDK that is provided by the AdoptOpenJDK project. The versions of Java on the OpenJDK Website are for testers, and the Oracle JDK is a proprietary product that requires license fees.
Use the LTS version of the OpenJDK, unless you need features that are in the latest releases.
Once you have installed a JDK, get the Apache Maven build tool. This is provided by the Maven project itself, and is not part of the OpenJDK.
Use jEnv if you need to run multiple JDKs, such as different versions of the same JDK.
Setting up Java with Homebrew
Run these commands in a terminal window:
This installs version 11 of the OpenJDK, from the AdoptOpenJDK project.
Run this command in a terminal window to install Maven:
Setting up jEnv
Run this command in a terminal window to install jEnv:
Next, add this to your PATH:
Add this to your ~/.bashrc file:
Open a new terminal window, and run this command:
This enables jEnv to manage the JAVA_HOME environment variable.
To avoid inconsistent behaviour, close all the terminal windows that you currently have open. The jEnv utility will work correctly in new terminal windows.
Lastly, run this command to register your current JDK with jEnv:
To see a list of the available commands, type jenv in a terminal window:
Manual Set up of AdoptOpenJDK
To manually install a copy of the JDK:
- Download the version of the JDK that you need from AdoptOpenJDK
- Unzip the download
- Copy the JDK directory to /usr/local/lib
- Edit your ~/.bashrc file to set environment variables. For example, to use jdk-11.0.3+7 as the Java version:
To manually install a copy of Apache Maven:
- Download the latest version of Maven
- Unzip the download
- Copy the Maven directory to /usr/local/lib/
- Add /usr/local/lib/MAVEN-DIRECTORY to your PATH environment variable
Replace MAVEN-DIRECTORY with the name of the directory that Maven uses, such as apache-maven-3.6.0.
Maven is written in Java, which means that the project provides one package, which works on any operating system that has a supported version of Java.
Python Development: pipenv
Unfortunately, macOS includes a copy of Python 2, so you will need to install Python 3 yourself.
To maintain current and clean Python environments, you should also use pipenv. This builds on two features of Python: the virtual environments and the pip utility.
Enter this command to install Python 3 and pipenv using Homebrew:
Use pipenv to manage your Python projects. The pipenv tool itself will automatically work with the copy of Python 3 from Homebrew.
To use the Python 3 interpreter outside of projects that are managed by pipenv, specify python3 on the command-line and inyour scripts, rather than python:
If you need to run the pip utility, rather than setting up a development environment with pipenv, always use the command pip3:
The Python Guide tutorialshows you how to work with pipenv.
Rust Development: rustup
The official rustup utility enables you to install the tools for building softwarewith the Rust programming language. Click on the Install button on the front page of theRust Website, and follow the instructions.
By default, the installer adds the correct directory to your path. If this does notwork, add this to your PATH manually:
This process installs all of the tools into your home directory, and does not add anyfiles into system directories.
Ruby Development: RVM
All macOS systems include a copy of Ruby, but it is outdated. To maintain current andclean Ruby environments, use the RVM system.
RVM relies on Git, so you must have a working installation of Git before you can set upRVM.
By default, RVM downloads copies of Ruby that have been compiled for your operatingsystem. If there is no compiled version, RVM then falls back to downloading the sourcecode and then compiling it on your computer. Enter this command to ensure that therequirements for compiling Ruby are on your system, using Homebrew:
Finally, you can speed up installation of gem packages by disabling the generation oflocal documentation. To do this, create a file in your home directory with the name.gemrc and put this line in it:
Minikube sets up and manages Kubernetes on a single system, so that you can develop and test without needing a set of servers.
To install Minikube with Homebrew, run these commands in a terminal window:
By default, Minikube uses a virtual machine manager. If you do not need VirtualBox, install hyperkit, which provides a minimal virtual machine manager.
To install Helm with Homebrew, run this command in a terminal window:
To install Skaffold with Homebrew, run this command in a terminal window:
This article explains Minikube in more detail.
Consider using containers to run the databases that you need. If you prefer to install servicesdirectly on to your workstation, Homebrew provides packages for PostgreSQL, MariaDB and MySQL.
Installing PostgreSQL
To install PostgreSQL using Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:
Gatekeeper won’t block unidentified apps anymore but keep in mind this is the least safe option since sometimes such apps can also include malicious code.We recommend you use the second option – Mac App Store and identified developers -, and when it comes to apps that don’t have a Developer ID you can manually approve those you consider safe (keep reading to learn how to do that). A warning will be displayed in a popup right away asking if you’re sure you want to open it. Click “Open Anyway” and the app will launch.You can do this for each unidentified app you want to open assuming you know it’s safe, of course.Nevertheless, there’s an even quicker way to do it.In Finder, Control + Click on the app and select “Open”. Select it and you’d be able to install any app you want. Manually trust individual appsIf you chose the “Mac App Store and identified developers” option, every time you attempt to open an app that doesn’t have a Developer ID you will get the warning message “App can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer” as shown above.To manually “trust” the app here’s what you need to do:Hit the “OK” button on the warning prompt to close it and navigate to System Preferences - Security & Privacy.In the “General” tab, under the “Allow apps downloaded from” options, you’ll see the app that was blocked by Gatekeeper when you tried to open it. Open unidentified apps on mac.
This command installs the server, the command-line tools, and the client libraries thatare needed to compile adapters for programming languages.
Homebrew also provides some commands for managing your PostgreSQL installation. Forexample, to start the server, follow the instructions that are displayed after theinstallation process is completed. If you upgrade your copy of PostgreSQL, you shoulduse the postgresql-upgrade-database command that Homebrew gives you.
Installing MariaDB or MySQL
To install MariaDB using Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:
To install MySQL using Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:
These commands install the server, the command-line tools, and the client libraries thatare needed to compile adapters for programming languages. To start the server, followthe instructions that are displayed after the installation process is completed.
For compatibility, MariaDB uses the same names for command-line tools as MySQL.
Remember to set a password for the root accounts. First, login with the mysqlcommand-line utility:
The -q Option Disables Command History: By default, the command-line client storesthe full text of every command in a history file. If you know that you are going torun statements that include passwords or other sensitive data, use the -q option.
Run these statements to change the password for root access:
You now need a password to login to the installation as root. To login with root again,use this command:
Enter the password when prompted.
You should also remove the anonymous accounts and test database that MySQL automaticallyincludes: https://omovxrq.weebly.com/egnyte-app-download-mac.html.
If you intend to duplicate a production environment for testing, create a configurationfile on your Mac. Production installations of MySQL should be configured withappropriate SQL modes to enable data integrity safeguards. By default, MySQL permitsvarious types of invalid data to be entered.
Database Management Tools
- Azure Data Studio for Microsoft SQL Server
- pgAdmin for PostgreSQL
- LibreOffice suite: brew cask install libreoffice
- VirtualBox virtual machine management: brew cask install virtualbox
- Docker container management: brew cask install docker
Apple offer overviews and task-orientated help on theirsupport Web site for new macOS users.
Every new user should probably readHow to switch to the Mac, by Rui Carmo.
The macOS Privacy and Security Guide by Dr Doh provides extensive information about those topics.
Whether this is your first Apple computer or you are just looking to upgrade, this guide will walk you through what things to look for when buying a Mac for app development. If you're wondering if you even need a Mac to make apps, check out this post.
Xcode
Xcode is the program we use to make apps for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. It's created by the fine folks at Apple and is free to download. You need to make sure that the Mac you buy can run the latest version of Xcode. A good way to know if a Mac can run the latest version is to check if the operating system version is compatible with the latest version of Xcode. You can do this by searching for Xcode on the Mac App Store or by checking this page. At the time of writing, the latest version of Xcode is 6.3.1 and requires OS X Yosemite. You would want to then make sure that the Mac you buy can install or run OS X Yosemite.
RAM
In my experience, RAM is going to have the biggest impact on your coding experience. The more RAM your machine has, the more smoothly your coding will go. At a minimum, you need at least 4 GB. This isn't ideal but it will work. 8 GB is going to be the most bang for your buck. Most people don't need more than that. However, if you got the dough.. 16 GB or more is going to provide the smoothest experience. The difference from 4 GB to 8 is huge. 8 to 16 is slightly better, but might not be worth the money.
Please note that with most new Apple products the RAM cannot be upgraded. So if you are buying a new machine, maybe buy a little more than you actually need so that your machine will be more 'future proof'. If you are buying an older Mac, check online to see if you can upgrade the ram. Crucial has a good guide.
Buying New
I always recommend buying a retail Apple Store or from the official Apple website. They have the best customer service and are great with returns if you ever need one. If you are involved with education in any way (student, teacher, faculty, home school) you can get a pretty good discount through Apple Education Pricing.
Buying Used
If you're buying used, you want to make sure you're buying a machine that works. Because of that, I highly recommend Craigslist. You can meet up with the seller and test the machine out for a while. Another option is eBay but there is some risk with whether what you're buying actually works. I have also heard that some universities have IT clearance sales where they sell old technology for cheap. This could also be a great option.
Desktops
Your three options here are a Mac Pro, an iMac, or a Mac Mini. For the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini please note that you'll have to provide your own monitor, mouse, and keyboard. All of these can be found at a second hand goods store for under $100. So now the question is which do you buy? If ya filthy rich and you know it, get the trash can. No better machine on the planet in my opinion.
So you're not filthy rich eh? Well the question is then between the iMac and the Mini. The Mini is definitely going to be cheaper. Even after getting your keyboard, monitor, and mouse the Mini is a much better deal. So if you have the budget for it, the iMac is very stylish and is a solid machine.
Laptops
Maybe the biggest reason to get a laptop is the portability. I personally have a MacBook Pro and I love taking it to programming meetups, the library, on the plane, and tons of other places. Portablity rocks :)
The big value buy in laptops is the MacBook Pro that does not have a retina screen. The hard drive and RAM can both be upgraded. This is a great way to make a really fast machine. But, the retina MacBooks are VERY nice on the eyes. Also when working on a smaller laptop screen, the retinas are going to make you feel like you have more space. Then comes the question of 13' vs 15' screen. For me, the 15' is just too big. For other, they love the extra space on the 15' and claim they can't live without it. Personal preference on this one.
Also, the MacBook air and the new super slim MacBook are a fine option for making apps. I have heard the 11' Macbook air can be really frustrating with it's tiny screen but I know people that make it work.
The Final Word
Whats A Good Mac For Mobile App Development Plan
So there are a lot of great Macs out there. The most important thing to be sure of is that your Mac will run Xcode. After that, the rest is really just personal preference. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions. And if you have a Mac, I'd love to hear which one and why you like or dislike it :)