How To Make A Terminal Program For Mac



To start the journey, learn how to open Terminal app on Mac: Click Launchpad and then type Terminal in the search bar. 1) Make your Mac talk to you. One of the simplest commands which can be very fun, especially when you are planning a prank on somebody. Just type any text in Terminal and your computer will speak it in your Mac's default voice. Open Finder and click on the Application option from the left side panel. Expand the Utilities folder and there you will find the Terminal option. Double click on it and the Terminal will open up. If you have a shortcut for the Applications folder on Mac, then you can directly locate the Terminal application from the list. Terminal provides a command line interface to control the UNIX-based operating system that lurks below macOS (or Mac OS X). Here's everything you need to know about Terminal. Don’t forget to take a backup of your Mac to be on a safe side. How to Create a Bootable Drive Using Terminal. There are two ways of creating a bootable copy of the installer. You can either use Terminal or get the job done through a free software like Recoverit to do it for you.

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This tutorial shows how to create and run a .NET console application using Visual Studio for Mac.

Note

Your feedback is highly valued. There are two ways you can provide feedback to the development team on Visual Studio for Mac:

  • In Visual Studio for Mac, select Help > Report a Problem from the menu or Report a Problem from the Welcome screen, which will open a window for filing a bug report. You can track your feedback in the Developer Community portal.
  • To make a suggestion, select Help > Provide a Suggestion from the menu or Provide a Suggestion from the Welcome screen, which will take you to the Visual Studio for Mac Developer Community webpage.

Prerequisites

  • Visual Studio for Mac version 8.8 or later. Select the option to install .NET Core. Installing Xamarin is optional for .NET development. For more information, see the following resources:

    • Tutorial: Install Visual Studio for Mac.
    • Supported macOS versions.
    • .NET versions supported by Visual Studio for Mac.

Create the app

  1. Start Visual Studio for Mac.

  2. Select New in the start window.

  3. In the New Project dialog, select App under the Web and Console node. Select the Console Application template, and select Next.

  4. In the Target Framework drop-down of the Configure your new Console Application dialog, select .NET 5.0, and select Next.

  5. Type 'HelloWorld' for the Project Name, and select Create.

The template creates a simple 'Hello World' application. It calls the Console.WriteLine(String) method to display 'Hello World!' in the terminal window.

The template code defines a class, Program, with a single method, Main, that takes a String array as an argument:

Main is the application entry point, the method that's called automatically by the runtime when it launches the application. Any command-line arguments supplied when the application is launched are available in the args array.

Run the app

  1. Press ⌥⌘↵ (option+command+enter) to run the app without debugging.

  2. Close the Terminal window.

Enhance the app

Enhance the application to prompt the user for their name and display it along with the date and time.

  1. In Program.cs, replace the contents of the Main method, which is the line that calls Console.WriteLine, with the following code:

    This code displays a prompt in the console window and waits until the user enters a string followed by the enter key. It stores this string in a variable named name. It also retrieves the value of the DateTime.Now property, which contains the current local time, and assigns it to a variable named date. And it displays these values in the console window. Finally, it displays a prompt in the console window and calls the Console.ReadKey(Boolean) method to wait for user input.

    The n represents a newline character.

    The dollar sign ($) in front of a string lets you put expressions such as variable names in curly braces in the string. The expression value is inserted into the string in place of the expression. This syntax is referred to as interpolated strings.

  2. Press ⌥⌘↵ (option+command+enter) to run the app.

  3. Respond to the prompt by entering a name and pressing enter.

  4. Close the terminal.

Next steps

In this tutorial, you created a .NET console application. In the next tutorial, you debug the app.

A guide to setting up an Apple Mac for DevOps and software development. This is current for macOS 10.14 (Catalina).

Do This First!

Log in once, run Software Update, and ensure that the operating system is at the latestpoint release. After all of the updates have been applied, restart the computer.

Log in again and create an Admin user account for your use. If other people will beusing the machine, create Standard accounts for them. Log out of the initial account,and log in to the Admin account that you have just created.

Always log in with this new Admin account. The benefit of leaving the initial accountuntouched is that it ensures that you always have a working account to login with.

Admin accounts have sudo privileges: All Admin accounts on a Mac may use sudo to runcommand-line utilities with administrative (root) privileges.

You should also find an external hard drive. Begin using Time Machine as soon aspossible, as it provides the most easy method for backing up your system.

Configuring a User Account

Configuring The Trackpad

To make the trackpad behave correctly, ensure that these settings are enabled:

  • System Preferences > Trackpad > Tap to click
  • System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options… >Enable dragging

Creating a Private Applications Folder

Once you have logged into your account, create a folder called Applications withinyour home folder. Whenever you are prompted to drag a new applications into the globalApplications folder, put it in this private Applications folder instead. Someapplications have to be installed to global folders, but in most cases you can keep thesystem directories clean by storing third-party products in your private Applicationsfolder.

Securing the Safari Browser

Whether or not you regularly use Safari, you should open it once, and adjust thesettings in case that you use it later.

First, choose Safari > Preferences > General and deselect the option Open “safe” files after downloading.

Second, go to Safari > Preferences > Search. Decide which search engine that you want to use. Ensure that Safari Suggestions is not enabled.

Then, check the plug-in settings. Go to Safari > Preferences > Security > Plug-in Settings… and review the plug-ins and settings.

Configuring Security

Apple provide quite secure operating systems, but unfortunately convenience has won outover security in a few places. These can easily be corrected by changing a few settings.If you are using a laptop then you should probably make all of these changes as soon aspossible.

Basic Settings

Select System Preferences > Security & Privacy, and set the following:

  • Under General, set require a password after sleep or screen saver begins toimmediately
  • Click Advanced… and select Require an administrator password to accesssystem-wide preferences
  • Under Firewall, click Turn Firewall On.
  • Under Privacy, select Analytics and ensure that the options are not enabled.

Disable Spotlight

By default, Spotlight sends queries to Apple. Unless you want this feature, turn it off.

Select System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, and ensure that Spotlight Suggestions is not enabled.

Enable File Vault NOW

Current versions of macOS include File Vault 2, a full-disk encryption system that haslittle in common with the much more limited File Vault 1. You should enable File VaultNOW, because it is the only protection against anyone with physical access to yourcomputer. All other security measures will be completely bypassed if someone withphysical access simply restarts the computer with a bootable pen drive.

File Vault really is secure, which means that you can permanently lose access to yourdata if you lose the passwords and the recovery key.

Set a Firmware Password

Set a password to stop access to theRecovery mode. Otherwise, any maliciousindividual can change the firmware settings to boot from a disc or device of theirchoosing. If you did not enable File Vault, then the attacker will have complete accessto all of the files on the system.

Apple Knowledge Base article HT204455provides full details.

Setting Up Time Machine Backups

Time Machine is simple to set up. Just take a suitably large external hard drive, plug itin to your Mac, and agree when prompted. The drive setup process will reformat the harddrive. The only settings that may need to change are the exclusions.

Choose System Preferences > Time Machine, and click Options. Add to the exclusionslist any folders that contain ISO disk images, virtual machines, or database files (suchas Entourage). If the external hard drive is short of space, exclude the Systemfolder.

Setting Up for Development

The first step is to install a compiler. The easiest way to install one is with theXcode Command Line Tools package.

Once you have the compiler that is provided by Xcode, you can useHomebrew to install everything else that you need.

Getting Xcode

Apple now provide the Xcode suite as a free download from the App Store. To installXcode Command Line Tools, install Xcode from the App Store, then open a Terminal windowand enter the following command:

Setting Up Homebrew

Homebrew provides a package management system for macOS, enabling youto quickly install and update the tools and libraries that you need. Follow theinstructions on the site.

You should also amend your PATH, so that the versions of tools that are installed withHomebrew take precedence over others. To do this, edit the file .zshrc inyour home directory to include this line:

You need to close all terminal windows for this change to take effect.

To check that Homebrew is installed correctly, run this command in a terminal window:

To update the index of available packages, run this command in a terminal window:

Once you have set up Homebrew, use the brew install command to add command-line software to your Mac, and brew cask install to add graphical software. For example, this command installs the Slack app:

How To Make A Terminal Program For Mac

Enabling Auto Completion of Commands

Many command-line tools provide automatic completion of commands. These include Git, curl and the AWS command-line tool. Homebrew installs the files for each command-line tool that provides completion, but it does not enable automatic completion in your shell.

To enable auto completion, edit the file .zshrc in your home directory to include this line:

Close all of the Terminal windows. Every new Terminal window will support autocompletion.

To use auto completion, type the name of the command, and press the Tab key on your keyboard. You will see a list of possible completions. Press the Tab key to cycle through the completions, and press the Enter key to accept a completion.

Installing the Git Version Control System

The Xcode Command Line Tools include a copy of Git, which isnow the standard for Open Source development, but this will be out of date.

To install a newer version of Git than Apple provide, use Homebrew. Enter this command in a terminal window:

If you do not use Homebrew, go to the Web site and follow thelink for Other Download Options to obtain a macOS disk image. Open your downloadedcopy of the disk image and run the enclosed installer in the usual way, then dismountthe disk image.

Always set your details before you create or clone repositories on a new system. Thisrequires two commands in a terminal window:

The global option means that the setting will apply to every repository that you workwith in the current user account.

To enable colors in the output, which can be very helpful, enter this command:

Text Editors

Installations of macOS include older command-line versions of bothEmacs and vim, as well asTextEdit, a desktop text editor. TextEdit is designed for light-weight word processing,and has no support for programming. Add the code editors or IDEs that you would prefer to use.

If you do not have a preferred editor, consider using a version of Visual Studio Code. Read the next section for more details.

To work with a modern Vim editor, install Neovim.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a powerful desktop editor for programming, with built-in support for version control and debugging. The large range of extensions for Visual Studio Code enable it to work with every popular programming language and framework. It is available free of charge.

The Microsoft releases of Visual Studio Code are proprietary software with telemetry enabled by default. To avoid these issues, use the packages that are provided by the vscodium project instead.

Once you have installed Visual Studio Code or VSCodium, read this article for more information about using the editor.

Neovim

If you would like a modern Vim editor with a good default configuration, set up Neovim.

Setting The EDITOR Environment Variable

Whichever text editor you choose, remember to set the EDITOR environment variable inyour ~/.zshrc file, so that this editor is automatically invoked by command-linetools like your version control system. For example, put this line in your profile tomake Neovim (nvim) the favored text editor:

Setting Up A Directory Structure for Projects

To keep your projects tidy, I would recommend following theGo developer conventions. These guidelines may seemslightly fussy, but they pay off when you have many projects, some of which are ondifferent version control hosts.

First create a top-level directory with a short, generic name like code. By default Gouses a directory called go, but you can change that when you set up a Go installation.

In this directory, create an src sub-directory. For each repository host, create asubdirectory in src that matches your username. Check out projects in the directory.The final directory structure looks like this:

Creating SSH Keys

You will frequently use SSH to access Git repositories or remote UNIX systems. macOSincludes the standard OpenSSH suite of tools.

OpenSSH stores your SSH keys in a .ssh directory. To create this directory, run these commands in a terminal window:

To create an SSH key, run the ssh-keygen command in a terminal window. For example:

Use 4096-bit RSA keys for all systems. The older DSA standard only supports 1024-bitkeys, which are now too small to be considered secure.

Programming Languages

JavaScript Development: Node.js

Homebrew provides separate packages for each version of Node.js.To ensure that you are using the version of Node.js that you expect, specify the versionwhen you install it. For example, enter this command in a Terminal window to install theNode.js 12, the current LTS release:

Add the bin/ directory for this Node.js installation to your PATH:

If you need yarn, enter this command in a Terminal window toinstall it:

Go Development

Use Homebrew to install Go:

This provides the standard command-line tools for Go.

The current version of Go includes support for dependency management with modules. Use modules for new projects. Some existing projects still use dep, or an older tool.

Setting a GOPATH

Current versions of Go do not require a GOPATH environment variable, but you should set it to ensure that third-party tools and Terminal auto-completion work correctly.

Set a GOPATH environment variable in your ~/.zshrc file:

Then, add this to your PATH:

Close the Terminal and open it again for the changes to take effect.

Java Development: AdoptOpenJDK

Which Version of Java?

Many vendors provide a JDK. To avoid potential licensing and support issues, use the JDK that is provided by the AdoptOpenJDK project. The versions of Java on the OpenJDK Website are for testers, and the Oracle JDK is a proprietary product that requires license fees.

Use the LTS version of the OpenJDK, unless you need features that are in the latest releases.

Once you have installed a JDK, get the Apache Maven build tool. This is provided by the Maven project itself, and is not part of the OpenJDK.

Use jEnv if you need to run multiple JDKs, such as different versions of the same JDK.

Setting up Java with Homebrew

Run these commands in a terminal window:

This installs version 11 of the OpenJDK, from the AdoptOpenJDK project.

Run this command in a terminal window to install Maven:

Setting up jEnv

Run this command in a terminal window to install jEnv:

Next, add this to your PATH:

Add this to your ~/.zshrc file:

Open a new terminal window, and run this command:

This enables jEnv to manage the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

To avoid inconsistent behaviour, close all the terminal windows that you currently have open. The jEnv utility will work correctly in new terminal windows.

Lastly, run this command to register your current JDK with jEnv:

To see a list of the available commands, type jenv in a terminal window:

Manual Set up of AdoptOpenJDK

To manually install a copy of the JDK:

  1. Download the version of the JDK that you need from AdoptOpenJDK
  2. Unzip the download
  3. Copy the JDK directory to /usr/local/lib
  4. Edit your ~/.zshrc file to set environment variables. For example, to use jdk-11.0.3+7 as the Java version:

To manually install a copy of Apache Maven:

  1. Download the latest version of Maven
  2. Unzip the download
  3. Copy the Maven directory to /usr/local/lib/
  4. Add /usr/local/lib/MAVEN-DIRECTORY to your PATH environment variable

Replace MAVEN-DIRECTORY with the name of the directory that Maven uses, such as apache-maven-3.6.0.

Maven is written in Java, which means that the project provides one package, which works on any operating system that has a supported version of Java.

Python Development: pipenv

Current versions of macOS include a copy of Python 3, but this will not be the latest version of Python. Use Homebrew to install the latest release of Python.

To maintain current and clean Python environments, you should also use pipenv. This builds on two features of Python: the virtual environments and the pip utility.

Enter this command to install Python 3 and pipenv using Homebrew:

Use pipenv to manage your Python projects. The pipenv tool itself will automatically work with the copy of Python 3 from Homebrew.

To use the Python 3 interpreter outside of projects that are managed by pipenv, specify python3 on the command-line and inyour scripts, rather than python:

If you need to run the pip utility, rather than setting up a development environment with pipenv, always use the command pip3:

The Python Guide tutorialshows you how to work with pipenv.

Rust Development: rustup

The official rustup utility enables you to install the tools for building softwarewith the Rust programming language. Click on the Install button on the front page of theRust Website, and follow the instructions.

By default, the installer adds the correct directory to your path. If this does notwork, add this to your PATH manually:

This process installs all of the tools into your home directory, and does not add anyfiles into system directories.

Ruby Development: RVM

All macOS systems include a copy of Ruby, but it is outdated. To maintain current andclean Ruby environments, use the RVM system.

RVM relies on Git, so you must have a working installation of Git before you can set upRVM.

By default, RVM downloads copies of Ruby that have been compiled for your operatingsystem. If there is no compiled version, RVM then falls back to downloading the sourcecode and then compiling it on your computer. Enter this command to ensure that therequirements for compiling Ruby are on your system, using Homebrew:

Finally, you can speed up installation of gem packages by disabling the generation oflocal documentation. To do this, create a file in your home directory with the name.gemrc and put this line in it:

Kubernetes: Minikube

Minikube sets up and manages Kubernetes on a single system, so that you can develop and test without needing a set of servers.

To install Minikube with Homebrew, run these commands in a terminal window:

By default, Minikube uses a virtual machine manager. If you do not need VirtualBox, install hyperkit, which provides a minimal virtual machine manager.

How To Make A Terminal Program For Mac

To install Helm with Homebrew, run this command in a terminal window:

To install Skaffold with Homebrew, run this command in a terminal window:

This article explains Minikube in more detail.

SQL Databases

Consider using containers to run the databases that you need. If you prefer to install servicesdirectly on to your workstation, Homebrew provides packages for PostgreSQL, MariaDB and MySQL.

Installing PostgreSQL

To install PostgreSQL using Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:

This command installs the server, the command-line tools, and the client libraries thatare needed to compile adapters for programming languages.

Homebrew also provides some commands for managing your PostgreSQL installation. Forexample, to start the server, follow the instructions that are displayed after theinstallation process is completed. If you upgrade your copy of PostgreSQL, you shoulduse the postgresql-upgrade-database command that Homebrew gives you.

Installing MariaDB or MySQL

To install MariaDB using Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:

To install MySQL using Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:

These commands install the server, the command-line tools, and the client libraries thatare needed to compile adapters for programming languages. To start the server, followthe instructions that are displayed after the installation process is completed.

For compatibility, MariaDB uses the same names for command-line tools as MySQL.

Remember to set a password for the root accounts. First, login with the mysqlcommand-line utility:

How To Make A Terminal Program For Mac

The -q Option Disables Command History: By default, the command-line client storesthe full text of every command in a history file. If you know that you are going torun statements that include passwords or other sensitive data, use the -q option.

Run these statements to change the password for root access:

You now need a password to login to the installation as root. To login with root again,use this command:

How To Make A Terminal Program For Mac Os

Enter the password when prompted.

You should also remove the anonymous accounts and test database that MySQL automaticallyincludes:

If you intend to duplicate a production environment for testing, create a configurationfile on your Mac. Production installations of MySQL should be configured withappropriate SQL modes to enable data integrity safeguards. By default, MySQL permitsvarious types of invalid data to be entered.

Database Management Tools

  • Azure Data Studio for Microsoft SQL Server
  • pgAdmin for PostgreSQL
  • LibreOffice suite: brew cask install libreoffice
  • VirtualBox virtual machine management: brew cask install virtualbox
  • Docker container management: brew cask install docker

Online Resources

Mac Terminal Application

Apple offer overviews and task-orientated help on theirsupport Web site for new macOS users.

How To Use Terminal On Mac

Every new user should probably readHow to switch to the Mac, by Rui Carmo.

How To Make A Terminal Program For Mac Computers

The macOS Privacy and Security Guide by Dr Doh provides extensive information about those topics.





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