Annyce Davis

Davis Technology Consulting

Dev Machine Setup – Mobile Development

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A new machine. Now what? Time to set it all up. Inevitably I end up going back and forth from my old machine or worse yet, my memory, to figure out what needs to be installed. No more. Today, I have compiled a list of everything I need to feel productive with a new dev machine. Perhaps, this can help you as well.

Software

I spend the majority of my time developing mobile applications. I work on both Android and iOS platforms. Further, I often need to inspect REST and GraphQL APIs. The following items help me to get my job done:

Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager that makes it easier for you to install things on your Mac or Linux machine. Here are the basic things I use it for:

  • Java 8 (Android Development) – brew cask install adoptopenjdk/openjdk/adoptopenjdk8
  • GraphiQL (GraphQL browser) – brew cask install graphiql
  • Git LFS (Large File Storage) – brew install git-lfs
  • Git Flow (Git branching model) – brew install git-flow

Chrome Extensions

Oh My Zsh

Oh My Zsh is an open-source framework for managing your zsh configuration. I like it for the useful plugins that make working on the command line easier.

These are the plugins that I use:

plugins=(git git-flow compleat zsh-autosuggestions)

The zsh-autosuggestions plugin requires special setup:

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

Aliases

Typing everything out. Who has time for that? Not me. I use aliases as much as I can. These can be defined in the ~/.zshrc file. Here’s a taste of a few to get you started:

alias ma="cd ~/dev/meetup-android"
alias mi="cd ~/dev/meetup-ios"
alias fs="git flow feature start $@"
alias aid="./gradlew assembleInternalDebug"
alias iid="./gradlew installInternalDebug"
alias install="adb install -r"

What’s something you can’t live without on your new dev machine? Share in the comments section below. Thanks

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