MacBook with Homebrew

Posted on October 27, 2025 • 5 min read • 956 words

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Set up an ARM-chip MacBook as developer machine using Homebrew as package manager.

Introduction

This document covers how to set up an ARM64 Macbook as a developer machine. It is geared towards Go, Python, JavaScript and Java development.

All commands on this page should be executed from the user’s home directory.

For using MacPorts instead of Homebrew as the package manager, refer to MacBook with MacPorts.

Install Xcode Command Line Tools

xcode-select --install

Install Homebrew

Use the macOS default Terminal app.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
eval $(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)
brew update
brew upgrade

Add the following line to both ~/.zshrc and ~/.bash_profile. Restart terminal.

eval $(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)

Use the latest version of `bash`

brew install bash bash-completion@2

Put bash inside /usr/local/bin and add it to /etc/shells.

pushd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /opt/homebrew/bin/bash
popd
echo '/usr/local/bin/bash' | sudo tee -a /etc/shells

Change the default shell for human admin user to /usr/local/bin/bash.

chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

Change the default shell for root to /bin/bash.

sudo chsh -s /bin/bash

Restart computer for the default shell change to take effect.

Install Ghostty

Go to the download page. Download the package installer and use it.

From now on perform all CLI operations in Ghostty.

Install essential utilities

brew install gawk rlwrap fzf bat

Install coding tools

When coding, run NeoVim inside Tmux sessions.

brew install git neovim ripgrep luarocks tmux pre-commit

Install `go`

brew install go

Install `uv`

brew install uv

Install documentation tools

brew install hugo sass/sass/sass

Install `fnm`

fnm is a Node versions manager that doesn’t cause a noticeable slow down at activation. The CLI interface is largely similar to that of nvm.

brew install fnm

Install AWS CLI v2

After installation, pin it to avoid unnecessary frequent version upgrade. It’s enough to upgrade for every minor version bump only.

brew install awscli
brew pin awscli

Install GitHub CLI

For authentication against GitHub, the most convenient option is to use the GitHub CLI. To install, run the following commands.

brew install gh

gh auth login

Install `shellcheck`

brew install shellcheck

Install `rustup`

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Get dot files

mkdir -p ~/.config
git clone https://github.com/kxue43/dot-files ~/.config/dot-files
~/.config/dot-files/set-up.sh --with=untracked

Restart the terminal so that Bash start-up files take effect.

Set the `.gitconfig.local` file

If the global Git user name and email must be different from the personal ones, set them via the following commands.

git config --file ~/.gitconfig.local user.name USERNAME
git config --file ~/.gitconfig.local user.email EMAIL

To configure commit signing differently from the default, add the following contents to .gitconfig.local. Use the options to turn commit signing on/off or to use a different GPG key.

[commit]
	gpgsign = true
[tag]
	gpgSign = true
[user]
	signingkey = ${GPG_KEY_ID}

If all Git configurations are the same with the personal defaults, symlink .gitconfig.local to .gitconfig.personal.

ln -s $HOME/.config/dot-files/.gitconfig.personal $HOME/.gitconfig.local

Set up GPG to sign Git commits

Install gnupg and pinentry-mac. The former is the GPG software while the latter is a GUI for prompting for passphrases.

brew install gnupg pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >>  ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf

Restart gpg-agent.

gpg-connect-agent reloadagent /bye

Enter GPG interactive mode by gpg --card-edit, and then enter the fetch and quit command in order. The outputs would be something like below.

gpg/card> fetch
gpg: requesting key from 'https://github.com/kxue43.gpg'
gpg: key C9EED408F4B6D021: "Ke Xue (kxue43.github.io) <xueke.kent@gmail.com>" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1

gpg/card> quit

Then use gpg --list-secret-keys to confirm that the keys have been fetched. The outputs should be something like below.

[keyboxd]
---------
sec>  rsa4096 2025-12-24 [SC]
      5EF2BE73370DCE7E808814DBC9EED408F4B6D021
      Card serial no. = 0006 27538718
uid           [ unknown] Ke Xue (kxue43.github.io) <xueke.kent@gmail.com>
ssb>  rsa4096 2025-12-24 [E]

Install Go executables

go install github.com/kxue43/cli-toolkit/cmd/toolkit@latest
go install github.com/kxue43/cli-toolkit/cmd/toolkit-assume-role@latest
go install github.com/kxue43/cli-toolkit/cmd/toolkit-serve-static@latest
go install github.com/kxue43/cli-toolkit/cmd/toolkit-show-md@latest
go install mvdan.cc/sh/v3/cmd/shfmt@latest
go install golang.org/x/tools/cmd/godoc@latest
go install golang.org/x/pkgsite
go install github.com/air-verse/air@latest

Install Rust executables

cargo install --locked tree-sitter-cli

Set up NeoVim

git clone https://github.com/kxue43/nvim-files ~/.config/nvim && nvim

After plugin installation finishes, run :MasonInstallAll to install all LSPs and :TSInstallAll to install all tree-sitter parsers.

Run :checkhealth to see if there are any problems.

Install Java, Maven and Gradle

First install Amazon Corretto 21 or another LTS version. This manual installation is to avoid the Oracle OpenJDK that comes from brew install openjdk.

Open the file ~/.${env}.bashrc (${env} depends on environment) and update the default Java version to use.

#export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v SET_HERE)

Source ~/.bashrc to refresh settings.

source ~/.bashrc

Manually install Maven and Gradle. Set their desired version numbers first. Packages are installed in ~/.local/lib. Symlinks to the binaries are created in ~/.local/bin.

export MVN_VERSION=3.9.10
export GRADLE_VERSION=8.14.2

curl -o ~/Downloads/apache-maven-${MVN_VERSION}-bin.zip -L https://dlcdn.apache.org/maven/maven-3/${MVN_VERSION}/binaries/apache-maven-${MVN_VERSION}-bin.zip
unzip -d ~/.local/lib ~/Downloads/apache-maven-${MVN_VERSION}-bin.zip
pushd ~/.local/bin && \
ls ~/.local/lib/apache-maven-${MVN_VERSION}/bin | xargs -I % sh -c "ln -s $HOME/.local/lib/apache-maven-${MVN_VERSION}/bin/%" && \
popd

curl -o ~/Downloads/gradle-${GRADLE_VERSION}-bin.zip -L https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-${GRADLE_VERSION}-bin.zip
unzip -d ~/.local/lib ~/Downloads/gradle-${GRADLE_VERSION}-bin.zip
pushd ~/.local/bin && \
ln -s $HOME/.local/lib/gradle-${GRADLE_VERSION}/bin/gradle && \
popd

rm ~/Downloads/apache-maven-${MVN_VERSION}-bin.zip 
rm ~/Downloads/gradle-${GRADLE_VERSION}-bin.zip

Optional

Install `pyenv`

pyenv is a CLI tool written in shell scripts. It installs multiple versions of Python by downloading and compiling them from C source code. First we install various tools that are needed to compile Python interpreters.

brew install openssl readline sqlite3 xz zlib tcl-tk

Now install pyenv via git clone into the ~/.pyenv folder.

git clone https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv.git ~/.pyenv
pushd ~/.pyenv && src/configure && make -C src && popd

Install `pipx` and `poetry`

brew install pipx
pipx ensurepath
pipx install poetry
pipx inject poetry poetry-plugin-export

Install Groovy

Download a Groovy SDK bundle into the ~/Downloads folder, e.g. use this link. Set the GROOVY_VERSION environment variable below to the corresponding version.

export GROOVY_VERSION=4.0.27

unzip -d ~/.local/lib ~/Downloads/apache-groovy-sdk-${GROOVY_VERSION}.zip
pushd ~/.local/bin && \
ls ~/.local/lib/groovy-${GROOVY_VERSION}/bin | grep -v '\.bat$' | grep -v '\.ico$' | xargs -I % sh -c "ln -s $HOME/.local/lib/groovy-${GROOVY_VERSION}/bin/%" && \
popd

rm ~/Downloads/apache-groovy-sdk-${GROOVY_VERSION}.zip

Open ~/.${env}.bashrc, update the installed Groovy version.

#export GROOVY_HOME=$HOME/.local/lib/groovy-SET_HERE

MacBook with MacPorts

GPG for GitHub