MacBook with MacPorts

Introduction  

This document covers how to set up an Intel-chip (x64) Macbook as a developer machine, using MacPorts as the package manager.

This is intended for old Macbooks whose OS has dropped out of Homebrew Tier 1 support. For example, when macOS Tahoe was released, Ventura dropped to Homebrew Tier 3 support. A 2017 Macbook Pro cannot upgrade beyond Ventura, so it has to use MacPorts. Since Tahoe is the last macOS that supports x64, eventually all Intel-chip Macbooks have to use MacPorts instead of Homebrew.

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

See MacBook with Homebrew for setting up an ARM64 MacBook using Homebrew as the package manager.

Install Xcode Command Line Tools  

xcode-select --install

Install MacPorts  

Use the GUI installer downloaded from the MacPorts website. Choose to use the “default prefix” during installation.

Use the macOS default Terminal app. Add the following line to both ~/.zshrc and ~/.bash_profile. Restart terminal.

export PATH="/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH"

Perform initial selfupdate.

sudo port selfupdate

Use the latest version of bash  

sudo port install bash bash-completion

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  

sudo port install curl jq gawk rlwrap fzf bat

Install coding tools  

When coding, run NeoVim inside Tmux sessions.

sudo port install git neovim ripgrep lua-luarocks tmux pre-commit

Install go  

sudo port install go

Install uv  

sudo port install uv

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.

sudo port install fnm

Install AWS CLI v2  

curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"
sudo installer -pkg AWSCLIV2.pkg -target /
rm AWSCLIV2.pkg

Install GitHub CLI  

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

sudo port install gh

Login immediately.

gh auth login

Install shellcheck  

sudo port install shellcheck

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 GUI installation is to avoid using Oracle OpenJDK at all.

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.

sudo port install pkgconfig openssl xz gdbm tcl tk +quartz sqlite3 sqlite3-tcl zstd

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  

sudo port 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