Bootstrap macOS with Ansible

This Ansible playbook installs and configures most of the software that I use on my macOS devices for day-to-day work as well as web and software development. Since some things in macOS are somewhat hard to automate, this file contains a few manual installation/setup steps to ensure that at least my documentation is complete.

Installation steps

The installation steps are straightforward:

1. Ensure that Apple's command line tools are installed
2. Clone or download this repository
3. On a fresh system, run the bootstrap.sh shell script
4. Ensure the Ansible environment is up to date
5. Run the Ansible playbook
6. Finish with manual configuration

The following is a shell script equivalent:

$ xcode-select --install
$ git clone https://github.com/rkrieger/bootstrap-macos.git
$ ./bootstrap.sh
$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml
$ ansible-playbook main.yml --ask-become-pass --extra-vars 'sshkey_passphrase=ChangeMe'
BECOME password: # Login password for an admin account

Note: If some Homebrew commands fail, you may need to agree to the Xcode licence or fix other Brew issues. Run brew doctor for diagnosis and a fix.

Manual configuration steps

Computer name

$ for item in ComputerName LocalHostName; do
  sudo scutil --set ${item} ${host}
done
$ dnscacheutil -flushcache

SSH remote logins

# Ensure Terminal has Full Disk Access privileges
# (from System Preferences / Security & Privacy)
$ sudo systemsetup -setremotelogin on

SSH agent (Keychain)

$ ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519  # Monterey and later
$ ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 # earlier versions

Testing the playbook

This project is continuously tested on GitHub's Actions' macOS infrastructure.

Author

This project was created by Rogier Krieger, inspired by Jeff Geerling's mac-dev-playbook.