Skip to content

New Machine Setup

There are a few things I have to have when setting up a new machine for development. This is a non-exhaustive list.

New Windows Machine setup

I install the following:

Installing and Setting up Windows Terminal

Open up the Microsoft Store application and download Windows Terminal.

Once it's installed open the start menu, find Windows Terminal, right click and select 'Pin to Taskbar'.

After starting Windows Terminal, click on the down arrow button on the top bar and select 'Settings'. Then navigate to Defaults -> Appearance from the left navigation bar under 'Profiles'.

Change the Font face to 'JetBrains Mono' (note that you must download and install the font before hand).

Next, adjust the transparency to around 90%.

Installing and Setting up Git

After downloading and installing git for windows open up a terminal window and add the following config items.

Setting up Git
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
# Make sure to change the user name to your own name.
git config --global user.name "John Doe"

# Make sure to change the email address.
git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

# New branches will be pushed to remote as default
git config --global push.autoSetupRemote true

# Set the default branch name for new repositories
git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Then create a global gitignore file. See Global .gitignore

Installing and Setting up Starship

Following the directions for Windows on Starship's guide:

Installing and Setting up Starship via Powershell
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
winget install --id Starship.Starship

# Add Starship Invoker to powershell profile
if (Test-Path -Path $PROFILE) {
  Add-Content $PROFILE "Invoke-Expression (&starship init powershell)"
} else {
  Set-Content $PROFILE "Invoke-Expression (&starship init powershell)" -Force
}

Installing Rust and Initial Setup

Download and run the rustup-init installer, choosing the default options.

Download and install Build tools for Visual Studio. Note that you'll want to check the version. At this time the current version is for VS 2022.

Open VS Code and install the following extensions:

Next install some helper utils using cargo install.

PowerShell
1
2
# Ripgrep is a quick search utility like 'grep'.
cargo install ripgrep

Installing Rust in WSL

Grab the rust install command from the Rustlang website and run that command.

Next you need to make sure you have the build essential package installed.

Installing the 'build-essential' package in Ubuntu WSL.
1
sudo apt install -y build-essential

Setting up WSL

First install WSL using powershell.

Setting up WSL using Powershell
1
2
3
4
5
# First we install WSL
wsl --install

# Next we install our distro.  I choose Ubuntu as default.
wsl --install -d Ubuntu

Next setup Git like we did in the Windows step above.

Next Install starship.

Installing starship in bash
1
curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh