Getting New Macbook. Suggestions?

a.com · June 15, 2016, 12:56pm

I’ve been developing on a macbook air (which has been fine) but I’m thinking of upgrading.

Any specs in particular that I should be looking out for? Or specific models worth seeking or avoiding?

pwiegers · June 15, 2016, 1:12pm

I got a Dell Chromebook 13. Put GalliumOS on it. Could not be more happy. Came from MacBook Pro - will not go back:

way cheaper
standard connections
dont like OS X too much (hate Windows) - I especially disliked that when I put an external keyboard in, home, ctrl etc would not work/work not as expected.
great screen. Resolution lower, but no glare /at all/
good keyboard/mousepad

hwillson · June 15, 2016, 2:04pm

One with a lot of disk space. I know this sounds like a no brainer, but if you’re coming from MacBook Air land, you’re used to working with a smaller amount of disk space. If you’re actively working on multiple Meteor projects at the same time, you might find that you’ll quickly chew through local disk space because of this issue:

The projects I’m currently working regularly use up about 25 gigs of space. I’m working on a MacBook Air and have to routinely clean my bundler-cache directories.

Other than that, the specs of any modern MacBook are more than sufficient for a great Meteor developer experience.

a.com · June 15, 2016, 2:18pm

o man the bundler cache… a month ago I was trying to figure out why I only had 5 gigs left on my macbook air. It was the bundler cache at almost 50 gigs!

a.com · June 15, 2016, 2:19pm

I’ve been on mac so long I don’t think I’ll make the change now. Interesting though.

timfletcher · June 16, 2016, 4:20am

New Mac laptops are rumoured to be released later this year so I’d say wait a short while. Check out the macrumours buyers guide for more info.

lohdlippi · June 18, 2016, 12:07am

Hello, how smooth is this OS for Meteor development ?

babrahams · June 18, 2016, 2:33am

Where are these found? (Not in meteor projects themselves, right?) My MacBook Air is always running out of disk space. Perhaps that’s the reason. And can you delete the entire contents of these directories with impunity?

ffxsam · June 18, 2016, 3:08am

Yep, they’re in your project folder under .meteor/local/bundler-cache.

pwiegers · June 18, 2016, 3:14am

Very: is is a linux distro, based on Ubuntu. I’ve been working on it, and so far experienced no OS-related problems. I highly recommend it (I really had problems with the MacBook keyboard layout, especcially with the home, end and ctrl c/x keys etc. Of course on the chromebook they are not mapped also [but you can map them yourself] but on an external keyboard, they will function as normal.]) YMMV, of vouse

hwillson · June 18, 2016, 10:32am

As @ffxsam mentioned, they’re stored within your app. Yes you can completely remove the bundler-cache directory without any issues. It will be re-created as needed by Meteor’s build tool. To quickly remove the directory and all cache files, you can run the following in your app (OSX/linux):

find . -type d -name 'bundler-cache' | xargs rm -r

The problem appears to be that when new files are added to the cache, and a version of that same file was previously cached, the previously cached file is not removed or overwritten. So every time you make a change to a source JS file, the Meteor build tool adds a new cache file to bundler-cache/linker, and doesn’t clean up any previous versions of the file (and doesn’t appear to have a global cleanup process in place either).

You can see this happening by:

Remove your apps bundler-cache directory
Start your Meteor app
Get a count of the files in the bundler-cache/linker directory (ls -l | wc -l)
Make a source change in one of your app files, to trigger a Meteor rebuild
Get a new count of the files in the bundler-cache/linker directory
Rinse and repeat

You’ll notice that the bundler-cache files keep going up as you make code changes.

If anyone wants to dig into this further (or better yet submit a PR! ), you can see how the cache is built up and used in the compiler-plugin.js source:

github.com

meteor/meteor/blob/9897092a7c6472b794420e82e9baf804276fd41e/tools/isobuild/compiler-plugin.js#L1260-L1365


const cacheKey = sha1(JSON.stringify({
  LINKER_CACHE_SALT,
  linkerOptions,
  files: jsResources.map((inputFile) => {
    return {
      hash: inputFile.hash,
      installPath: inputFile.installPath,
      sourceMap: !! inputFile.sourceMap,
      mainModule: inputFile.mainModule,
      imported: inputFile.imported,
      lazy: inputFile.lazy,
      bare: inputFile.bare,
    };
  })
}));


{
  const inMemoryCached = LINKER_CACHE.get(cacheKey);
  if (inMemoryCached) {
    if (CACHE_DEBUG) {

This file has been truncated. show original

Maybe one possible fix could be to modify how the cache key is created, so that when files are being cached that have a previous version in the bundler-cache, the same cache key is used, which means the previously cached file is overwritten with the newly cached file (cache key translates down into the name of the cached file on the file system). Of course, I’m purely speculating here … I haven’t dug into this very far.

babrahams · June 18, 2016, 12:49pm

Thanks @ffxsam and @hwillson. I found one bundler-cache in excess of a Gb and, when every Gb counts, it’s helpful to know I can remove that.

a.com · June 18, 2016, 12:53pm

mine was like 30 gigs or something. INSANE!

hwillson · June 18, 2016, 3:12pm

I’ve taken a closer look - adjusting how the cacheKey is generated does appear to fix this issue. I’ll move my findings over to the GH issue. Hopefully we can get a fix for this worked out shortly … before my MacBook Air SSD disintegrates …

dcworldwide · June 25, 2016, 2:31am

I’m a mbp user. The Dev and designer experience is excellent. I won’t be leaving mac. I’ll always buy highest spec

tomtom87 · June 25, 2016, 11:19am

Get the highest spec mac you can, they are well built - solid for travelling and easy to get fixed. Put the SSD in and max out the ram you will be laughing.

wkniffin · June 25, 2016, 3:41pm

A Mac is much better for Meteor dev than Windows in my opinion.

lohdlippi · June 25, 2016, 9:07pm

Yep, just a little expensive for me at the moment.

eleventy · June 25, 2016, 9:34pm

Question was: how smooth is GalliumOS / Linux for Meteor dev, not Windows.

I work on a Desktop which runs Ubuntu, and it works perfectly, really smooth. Since in production you probably run on linux as well, your dev-environment is very close to your production environment.

Sometimes I also work on an old laptop running Win7, and there I run LinuxLite ( a lightweight Ubuntu-clone) on Virtualbox, which works reasonably well, but is not as fast.

If I were to buy a new laptop, I’d skip windows and Mac, and go Ubuntu, with enough ram and SSD. More bang for the buck.

a.com · September 24, 2017, 1:21pm

I never actually ended up purchasing a computer in June of 2016. But now I’m looking again.

These seem to be the options. I could care less about the trackpad, drains battery and looks like it could break easily. Or has anyone used it and found it useful for coding somehow?

I need to travel with this, but all three versions have a 13 inch version I think, so I don’t absolutely have to get the macbook air.

What do people think? Macbook, Air, or Pro?