Prior Art

[qjack001]

Here are a bunch of projects that do similar (-ish, to varying degrees) things. I've looked into them and given a couple a go, but have not found that any provide what I'd be looking for. Still useful to see how some of these approach the problem.

• Nix Darwin: this is seemingly exactly what I'd want, but the tool is super complex[^1] and the documentation is poor.
• Home Manager: another Nix-related thing. Again, super confused by the docs, but it looks like you run it inside nix-darwin?? I think the idea is that it manages your home directory.
• pier: a tool for managing scripts, aliases, one-liners. Basically just replaces a .bashrc file full of scripts with a TOML file full of scripts, but offers some nice features: list available commands, quickly add new ones, etc.[^2]
• Shallow Backup: backs up dotfiles, installed packages, relevant app config files (VS Code, iTerm, etc), and user fonts.[^3]
• Stronghold: configure MacOS security settings from the command line.
• sheldon: plugin manager for (I think) Zsh. I'm not super familiar with Zsh or its plugin model.
• strap: a bootstrapping script that configures settings and a "minimal set of software every macOS developer will want" — not true and not configurable.
• Homebrew Bundler: the classic Brewfile.

[^1]: The tool could be built on top of Nix/Nix-Darwin, and just provide a simpler interface for managing your config. [^2]: I could see these features being rebuilt to work with standard .bashrc/.zshrc files. [^3]: This is a nice idea. I do want to include the one or two fonts I use in my terminal and IDEs so that I can ensure a restored config can pull the right font up. I can tell that the creator is not a big font person though, as the tool seems to backup all user installed fonts. At the moment, this tries to backup the 1,658 font files I have installed.

[qjack001]

https://homebrew-file.readthedocs.io/

[tailorem]

This is a decent reference: https://www.moncefbelyamani.com/automating-the-setup-of-a-new-mac-with-all-your-apps-preferences-and-development-tools/

It's by the creator of Ruby on Mac - $49 USD (~$68 CAD). It sounds pretty close to what I want, but I've a heavy preference for open source. Despite the name, it's sort of misleading - it sounds like setting up Ruby is just one of the functions of it.