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System Setup for Shopify Development

Before diving into Shopify development, you’ll need to set up some essential tools on your system. I aim to keep this setup minimal, only including what’s absolutely necessary. You may already have some of these tools installed, so consider this a bare-bones setup for Shopify and web development.

Prerequisites for All Developers​

Here are the tools everyone will need, regardless of operating system:

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The following setup instructions differ based on whether you’re using a Mac or Windows. Follow the steps for your operating system, then return to the Everyone (Continued) after.

Jump to:

Mac Setup​

For macOS users, you'll need to install the following using the terminal:

  1. Apple's Xcode Command Lines Tools

    (This will also install git)

xcode-select --install

  1. Homebrew,

    Homebrew is a package manager that simplifies the installation and management of developer tools.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
  1. Install Node using Homebrew
brew install node
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Homebrew will be used to install additional packages later, but Node.js is all we need for now.

Windows Setup​

  1. Install Git Bash for Windows

    Make sure to select the option to install Chocolatey package manager during the installation process.

  2. Install Node.js using Chocolatey

choco install nodejs.install
tip

You may need to run the choco commands from PowerShell with Admin privileges.

Everyone (Continued)​

Once you've completed the operating system-specific setup, follow these steps:

  1. Configure Git with your user name and email
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@email.com"
  1. Set VS Code as your default Git editor
git config --global core.editor "code --wait"

  1. Create and add an SSH key to your GitHub account

    This will allow you to push and pull code from your repositories without having to enter your username and password each time.

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Detailed instructions for generating and adding an SSH key to your GitHub account can be found here.

Why No Shopify CLI Installation?​

You may have noticed that we haven't installed the Shopify CLI yet. For the sake of these tutorials, I’ll be installing Shopify CLI as a local development dependency in the project folder. This approach avoids potential conflicts caused by different versions. We’ll install the CLI using npm when it's needed in the project.