Step by step guide on setting up an Elixir dev environment on macOS Catalina

We used to have a lot of guides like this in Ruby and I don’t see many of them around these days. I think this is because fewer and fewer people do fresh installs (because Apple made it hard, so most people use Migration Assistant now). However if you find you need to set up a dev environment up from scratch, this guide could be just for you!

Link: How to set up an Elixir dev environment on macOS Catalina

It covers Ruby as well, but you can skip that bit if you don’t want Ruby.

If anyone has any tips or notices any mistakes please let me know!

Need to do a completely clean install of macOS?

While on the topic of fresh installs, if anyone needs a guide on how to do a completely clean install of macOS (rather than a migration using Migration Assistant) you might find my other post useful.

As far as I know there aren’t any other guides that show you this (because Apple made it so difficult so less people are doing them nowadays). As always though, back up all your files first and do a Time Machine backup as well - so you always have the option to do a normal migration.

Although it’s up for debate, many people think doing a completely clean install like this leaves you with a more nippy system because you don’t have the baggage that’s built up over the years (admittedly less of a problem with macOS than other operating systems).

If you notices any mistakes please let me know and if you try it let me know how you get on