On macOS it's pretty easy to automate the installation of all your apps, including Mac App Store apps, for those times when you get a new Mac or wipe your current one. As a software developer I find this capability indispensable, as would any professional or power user.
All you need to do is install Homebrew and then use it to install mas (which is an acronym for Mac App Store). Once they are installed, you can install all your software using a convenient Bash script. Homebrew will be used to install non-store apps, and mas will handle installing the Mac App Store apps.
Note: only Mac App Store apps you have already installed previously can be installed with mas. You cannot install new apps you have never installed from the store.
The most obvious reason to script out your software installations is that it greatly reduces the time to set up a new Mac, as well as ensure that you don't forget to install one or more apps. It also provides a way to update all the apps at once via the brew upgrade command. And it also provides a way to update apps that don't have their own update feature.
Apps installed with mas will be updated normally by the Mac App Store.
In order to use this process you need to know the names of the Homebrew formulae/casks for each application, and you also need to know the IDs of the Mac App Store apps for mas. Fortunately this is super easy.
First, Homebrew has a tool for finding software available in their service at https://formulae.brew.sh/. Simply use this to find your apps and make sure you're installing the right ones. Those listed as “casks” are GUI Mac apps (normal apps you don't run from the Terminal). Ones listed as “formulae” are typically command line tools run from the Terminal or services without an interface.
Second, for Mac App Store apps you simply use mas to list what's currently on your computer from the Mac App Store.
This will give you a list of currently installed apps from the Mac App Store, with their IDs:
You can also search for Mac App Store apps by name using the mas search command:
This will show a similar result for matches. You can even install all search results with a single “lucky” command. See the mas help for these and other options.
Here's an example of a Bash script to get you started. I keep a similar script updated as I use new apps or stop using others. Then I'm ready to go when I have to set up a new or wiped Mac.
You can name the Bash script something like install-software.sh and execute it in a Terminal like this:
The first time you use the script will absolutely justify the time spent writing it. The second time you run it you will thank your past self for being so smart 😉.
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SqlPkg is a 64-bit .NET command line (CLI) wrapper for the Microsoft SqlPackage CLI tool with the goal of making common backup and restore operations easier and more powerful. It does this through new Backup and Restore actions that provide additional features like the exclusion of specific table data in backups and destination prep prior to restore.
Visit the repository to see how you can install this tool to begin using it right away.
/Action:backup
This mode is equivalent to Action:Export to create a .bacpac file, with the following differences.
/Action:restore
This mode is equivalent to Action:Import to restore a .bacpac file, with the following differences.
/Action:backup-all
This mode will back up all user databases on a server.
/Action:restore-all
This mode will restore all *.bacpac files in a given path to databases with the same names as the filenames.
When not using SqlPkg special action modes, the entire argument list is simply piped to SqlPackage and will run normally. So you can use sqlpkg everywhere SqlPackage is used.
1. Install Microsoft .NET
SqlPkg requires that you already have the .NET 8.0 runtime installed, which you can get at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download.
Because SqlPkg uses Microsoft SqlPackage, you will also need to install the .NET 6.0 runtime as well as SqlPackage.
2. Install SqlPkg
Run the following command in your command line interface (e.g. cmd, PowerShell, Terminal, bash, etc.):
Later you can update SqlPkg with the following command:
If you need to completely uninstall SqlPkg, use the command below:
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The Fdeploy project is a command line interface (CLI) application that can use simple YAML config files in your ASP.NET web projects to define deployment to one or more remote environments over SMB, like over a VPN connection using a network file share.
It can be configured to clean and purge the project, build, and publish, and even add files and folders to the published output prior to deployment.It can then deploy with various rules like "path ignore", "always update path", "clean orphaned files and folders", and more. You can even define content that can be deployed without taking the web app offline. And when it does, it uses an app offline file that you can also customize in the YAML settings.
Fdeploy also has robust retry support. When files are in-use on the remote server it will retry one or more times and wait a specified number of seconds between attempts.
Visit the repository to see how you can install this tool to begin using it right away.
1. Install Microsoft .NET
Fdeploy requires that you already have the .NET 8.0 runtime installed, which you can get at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download.
2. Install Fdeploy
Run the following command in your command line interface (e.g. cmd, PowerShell, Terminal, bash, etc.):
Later you can update Fdeploy with the following command:
If you need to completely uninstall Fdeploy, use the command below:
There's usually more to the story so if you have questions or comments about this post let us know!
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The NameCheap project builds a command line interface (CLI) application that can add and remove text records using the NameCheap API.
It was originally built to allow for creating wildcard TLS certificates using win-acme (Let's Encrypt) on an IIS server. Creating wildcard certificates with win-acme requires DNS host validation. This application can be used with the win-acme script feature to allow it to communicate with the NameCheap API and create/delete TXT records that will validate domain ownership.
This tool does not support the complete NameCheap API. But it does handle the challenging task of adding and removing text records. Why is this challenging? The NameCheap API does not have functions to add or remove individual records, so the entire set of records must be downloaded, modified, and sent back.
Download the project and publish it from the root project folder as below.
In the publish folder, edit the appsettings.json file and supply your own values.
Once the appsettings.json file is modified, put the contents of the publish folder on your server and you should be able to use the executable with win-acme or any other tool by calling it with a fully qualified path.
The command line is in the format below:
Some examples include:
So in win-acme you would set your create script arguments to this:
Likewise, your delete script arguments would be:
The tool can be used on Linux or macOS as well. If the published executable doesn't run on macOS you may need to manually sign the published application using something like this:
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The Benford project provides a framework for using Benford's Law to determine if a given random data set has been modified.
Benford’s Law, also known as the Law of First Digits, the Phenomenon of Significant Digits, or the Law of Anomalous Numbers is the finding that the first digits (or numerals to be exact) of the numbers found in series of records of the most varied sources do not display a uniform distribution, but rather are arranged in such a way that the digit “1” is the most frequent, followed by “2”, “3”, and so in a successively decreasing manner down to “9”. The expected distributions can be seen in the screenshots below.
Essentially, when looking at a significantly large set of numbers, this law can tell you if the distributions of first digits follows Benford's Law. Deviations of significance should indicate data tampering. This can be applied in all kinds of use cases, from social likes and follower counts, to regional vote counts, financial information, and more.
This project has some sample images and voting data that you can use to see how Benford's Law applies to them.
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The DataStore project is a high performance JSON object store (ORM) for SQL Server.
DataStore uses and automatically creates and manages a pre-defined SQL Server data structure that can coexist with existing database objects. All database operations are performed with the DataStore helper class.
Your models are stored in the database as JSON text so you can have most any kind of object structure, provided your models inherit from DsObject.
Instantiating DataStore with settings is non-destructive. Any existing DataStore tables are left untouched. Methods to delete all or unused schema objects are provided for those edge cases.
Instantiate DataStore with a settings object and database schema will be created for all classes that inherit from DsObject. The following attributes can be used in your classes:
You can create a DataStore instance anywhere in your code:
You can also use DataStore as a singleton service:
Creating and saving a DataStore object is simple:
The saved object is updated with any changes, like lineage and depth information, creation or last update date, etc. And you can provide a list of objects to save them all in one call.
Querying the database for objects is simple too. In any read calls you can specify a DsQuery object with a fluent-style pattern for building your query. In the query you can specify property names as strings with dot notation:
Or you can use the model structure to specify names, and make code refactoring easier:
If you need to access object properties without knowing the object type, DsObject exposes JSON features that allow you to access property values using standard JSON path syntax:
Remember: these JSON features are read-only. If you change a property value in the DsObject you will need to call Serialize() again to update the JSON representation.
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Microsoft (in)famously requires that your PC have a special security chip (TPM) in order to install Windows 11. But the requirement is wholly unnecessary to maintain a secure installation. And it requires many people to buy new PCs, arguing that this is likely the primary reason Microsoft implemented the requirement.
Patching the Windows install to allow it to run on existing hardware without a TPM chip has been a game of cat and mouse. And until now it had again been thwarted by Microsoft.
Recently Microsoft has patched the Windows 11 ‘product server’ trick for TPM check bypass, but the bypass still works with setupprep.exe. This bypass will upgrade Windows 10 clients to Windows 11 without requiring a TPM.
Being a pragmatist when it comes to software development, I generally prefer simple solutions whenever possible. So when clients are faced with the challenge of determining which features to add to their products, as a starting point I usually recommend looking at user value versus cost to implement.
Given a progressive value scale from a “cup of coffee” at the low end and a “house” at the high end, we can easily see where the best choices lie.
Looking at the first row in this example, if a user values a feature at “house” and your cost to implement is a “cup of coffee” this feature addition becomes a no-brainer.
Likewise if a user values a feature at a “cup of coffee” but it will cost a “house” to build, it's certainly a feature to avoid implementing.
There may be some diamonds in the center blue area, but more information is usually required before we make those decisions.
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Here's a Mac pro tip: When copying a git repository directory to your network file server using rsync, try this:
This will copy the files with timestamps but no other attributes, and will also give the file owner (you) full access rights. This ensures that you (or even Windows users with access rights) can overwrite the directory contents later because local read-only files (e.g. in the .git directory) won't be read-only on the server. You can also change the chmod option to customize the rights, like ensuring everyone has full control.
It looks like a recent change to Docker has allowed Macs with Apple Silicon to run a full installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2022 with full-text search in a Docker container.
How is this possible? Docker has a new feature that can use Rosetta 2 for x64 emulation. That means it supports creating an x64-based Linux image/container and installing the free but full version of SQL Server with FTS.
Enable this feature in the Docker settings as seen in the image below. Look in Settings => Features in development.
Take the content below and save it as a text file named Dockerfile. This configuration creates an Ubuntu 20.04 image, then installs the Microsoft package repositories, SQL Server 2022, FTS, and MS Tools.
This will build the Dockerfile and create a Docker image named sqlserver.
This will create a container from the new image and run it. The sa user will have a password of P@ssw0rdz!, the EULA will be accepted, and port 1433 will be opened.
At this point you should have SQL Server running! You can also have it start up with Docker by executing the command below:
