My Development Environment Checklist

Lately I’ve been admitted as intern at a tech startup to work on a SDK. To begin the development, my first task is to get my development environment ready. This job allows me to take time to reflect on what I’ve done to make it cozy, and how to make it better or even streamlined.

Configure Shell

Install zsh

Try zsh --version to see if Z shell has been installed. If not, use package manager if you have root access, or build zsh from source.

Using package manager

Install zsh by following the instructions here:

# on centos
sudo yum update && sudo yum -y install zsh

# on ubuntu
sudo apt install zsh

Building zsh from source (optional)

You may build zsh from source if you don’t have root access.

wget ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh-5.6.2.tar.xz
tar xf zsh-5.6.2.tar.xz
cd zsh-5.6.2
./configure --prefix=${HOME}/local
make -j && make check && make install

Make zsh your default shell

On Centos, add ${HOME}/local/bin/zsh-5.6.2 -l. On Ubuntu, do chsh -s $(which zsh).

if you don’t have a .zshrc template, you can copy from GitHub and change accordingly.

Install oh-my-zsh

This is as simple as one line of command:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Config oh-my-zsh

In ~.zshrc, do the following:

• change theme to ZSH_THEME="af-magic"
• add plugins=(autojump)
• (optional) configure python environment

# make python3 the default python version to use with virtualenv
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS=' -p /usr/bin/python3 '

Then do source ~/.zshrc to reload the environment.

Configure Vim

Update vim

Install awesome-vim

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/amix/vimrc.git ~/.vim_runtime
sh ~/.vim_runtime/install_awesome_vimrc.sh

Install Vundle

Use vundle to manage plugins like

• NERDTree
• bufexplorer
• YouCompleteMe

Config vim

Basically just copy ~/.vim_runtime/my_configs.vim to the counterpart :p

Configure tmux

Install tmux

To install tmux without root access, see my another post.

Config tmux

Use the tmux conf file here.

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux.git
$ ln -s -f .tmux/.tmux.conf
$ cp .tmux/.tmux.conf.local .

Other utilities & tools

• homebrew (on MacOS)
• htop
• gcc-4.9 (for OpenMP support on MacOS)