A Go-based bootstrap tool that installs a development environment across macOS, Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL/Fedora, and Arch Linux on x86_64 and aarch64. It installs system packages, optional Flatpak GUI apps, and a set of custom third-party tools (Go, Neovim, Zig, NVM, pyenv, oh-my-zsh, Firecracker on Linux).

Install

Download the pre-built binary for your platform and make it executable.

Using curl:

curl -Lo bootstrap_environment "https://github.com/JMR-dev/bootstrap_dev_env/releases/latest/download/bootstrap_environment-$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')-$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/amd64/; s/aarch64/arm64/; s/arm64/arm64/')"
chmod +x bootstrap_environment

Using wget:

wget -O bootstrap_environment "https://github.com/JMR-dev/bootstrap_dev_env/releases/latest/download/bootstrap_environment-$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')-$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/amd64/; s/aarch64/arm64/; s/arm64/arm64/')"
chmod +x bootstrap_environment

Usage

# Linux (do NOT use sudo on macOS — Homebrew refuses to run as root)
sudo ./bootstrap_environment [--only system|flatpak|custom] [--gui]

# macOS
./bootstrap_environment [--only system|custom] [--gui] [--no-vm]

Flags:

--only — restrict to one section (system, flatpak, or custom).
--gui — include GUI applications and the Flatpak section. Default is headless: both are skipped.
--no-vm — macOS only: skip provisioning the Fedora-on-QEMU/VirtualBox VM that backs the firecracker() zsh wrapper.

Package lists live in packages.go. Edit and rebuild.

Build from Source

If you prefer to build the tool yourself, or if you are making custom modifications:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/JMR-dev/bootstrap_dev_env.git
cd bootstrap_dev_env

Build for the current host platform:

make build           # builds ./bootstrap_environment for the host

To cross-compile binaries for all supported targets at once:

make build-all       # writes dist/bootstrap_environment-{linux,darwin}-{amd64,arm64}