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Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

#42

Post by DigitalJack »

dvcrn wrote: post #10

I have my dotfiles for that. Split into different categories (brew, npm, pip) together with all the config files I need. brew and brew cask (with brew-bundle [0] for Brewfile support) take care of getting all libraries and applications onto the system. For the development itself I'm either shipping my entire config (.vimrc for example) or use systems like spacemacs, sublimious or proton that only need 1 single file t…

I have no strong opinion here, but I am curious to hear yours. What were the discriminators in choosing saltstack over the alternatives?

My head spins with these tools and every time I pick one I seem to eventually run into a road block that is a no-go. The most recent effort was ansible and the no-go was its strict dependency on python2.7.

Re: Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

#44

Post by xemdetia »

I usually develop in VM's where the machines are very well defined so it's easier to build a build machine. In the end though this usually means that the absolute package requirements are held by the project repo so what needs to be installed is based on that.

So if I need to start a project or rebuild a system to do a project I can generally use the project itself as guidance on what to install. After two or three builds I have usually cleared all the dependency hurtles. The only thing that really breaks down is not having your dotfiles available, but for me those are backed up/in SCM.

If you are familiar with building projects from scratch it becomes a lot easier to understand dependencies and grow the system to what it needs to be, and with VMs it is that much easier to start with a blank slate that you are capable of blowing away and not even trouble secondary workflows.

Re: Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

#47

Post by CraigJPerry »

I did do ansible https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home-network but I've decided it's overkill for my dev machines.

I still like ansible as a layer on top of AMI images when I spin projects up in the cloud though. I don't want to have to go install iotop when I want to use it, I want to just know that my tools are present and ready to go. But I consider this a different type of machine from my dev hosts.

As I see it, the best solution on a dev machine is to make it easy to install software I might need in future. That means having a package manager available and access to my preferred configuration. On linux I just need my dotfiles repo available on the box, on windows I also need chocolatey installed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

#48

Post by mbrock »

I recently reinstalled my NixOS laptop. I just installed the distribution, added my SSH keys, cloned a repository, made a handful of symlinks, and then told NixOS to set everything up.

It's actually a collaborative repository, so that both of us in our company can improve the computer configuration, install new tools or language runtimes, etc etc.

The shared configuration has stuff like: our user accounts and public SSH keys; local mailer setup; firewall; conf for X/bash/emacs/ratpoison/tmux; list of installed packages (including Chromium, mplayer, nethack, etc); fonts and keymaps; various services (nssmdns, atd, redis, ipfs, tor, docker, ssh agent, etc); some cron jobs; a few custom package definitions; and some other stuff.

In Emacs, I use "use-package" for all external package requirements so that when I start the editor it installs all missing packages from ELPA/MELPA.

Aside from dealing with the binary WiFi blob this Dell computer demands, reinstalling was a pleasure.

Re: Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

#49

Post by VLM »

greydius wrote: post #26

sudo apt-get install emacs

I only have two emacs installs, home and work. But I keep them in sync, kinda, using:

https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package

So my .emacs/init.el looks like

  (use-package helm-projectile
    :ensure t
    :config (helm-projectile-on)
  )
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