Intel Macs

Most of the team uses Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later). If yours has an Intel processor, the setup still works, but Homebrew, which the setup script uses for most tools, is dropping Intel Macs:

  • Since September 2026, Homebrew builds no new prebuilt packages for Intel Macs. A tool whose newest version has no Intel package is built from source on your Mac, which can take hours. The setup script asks before it does that.

  • From September 2027, Homebrew won’t run on Intel Macs at all, so the script can’t install or upgrade the tools it gets from Homebrew. Install those yourself from the official release pages below.

To check which processor you have, choose Apple menu > About This Mac: an Intel Mac lists a Processor, an Apple Silicon Mac a Chip.

What Keeps Working

These don’t come from Homebrew, so nothing changes for them on an Intel Mac:

  • The Xcode Command Line Tools, including git.

  • SDKMAN, Java and Maven. SDKMAN still offers Intel builds of the JDKs.

  • Apps you download from their vendors, such as OrbStack or Docker Desktop, IntelliJ IDEA and Postman, as long as the vendor still offers an Intel version.

Installing the Tools Yourself

When Homebrew can’t install a tool, download it from its official release page. Don’t use copies from other sites.

Tool Official download Which file

Skaffold

https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/skaffold/releases

The macOS Intel binary, named skaffold-darwin-amd64

Kustomize

https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/releases

The archive ending in darwin_amd64.tar.gz

kubectl

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-macos/

Follow the Intel instructions on that page

jq

https://github.com/jqlang/jq/releases

The binary named jq-macos-amd64

TruffleHog (git hooks)

https://github.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/releases

The archive ending in darwin_amd64.tar.gz

Jira CLI

https://github.com/ankitpokhrel/jira-cli/releases

The macOS archive for x86_64

PlantUML

https://github.com/plantuml/plantuml/releases

The .jar file, which runs on Java on any Mac. PlantUML also needs Graphviz, which has no official Mac download; MacPorts, which still supports Intel Macs, has it.

wget has no official Mac download either. You don’t need it: curl, which comes with macOS, does the same job.

For each tool:

  1. Download the file for macOS on Intel (darwin_amd64, macos-amd64 or x86_64 in the file name).

  2. If the release page publishes checksums, compare yours with the one listed for that file:

    shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/skaffold-darwin-amd64

  3. Unpack an archive (tar xzf <file>.tar.gz), then move the program into a folder on your PATH, such as ~/bin, under the tool’s name, and make it executable:

    mkdir -p ~/bin
mv ~/Downloads/skaffold-darwin-amd64 ~/bin/skaffold
chmod +x ~/bin/skaffold

    If ~/bin isn’t on your PATH yet, add export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" to your ~/.zshrc and open a new terminal.

  4. If macOS refuses to open it because it can’t check the developer, remove the download’s quarantine flag:

    xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/bin/skaffold

  5. Check that it works, for example with skaffold version, then run bash ngss-dev-setup.sh doctor to see what’s still missing.

To upgrade a tool later, repeat these steps with the newer release. Check with the team before you move to a new major version of Skaffold, Kustomize or TruffleHog, since builds, deployments and the git hooks depend on them.