Blown away by Migration Assistant!

[matsan]

After spending some time trying to replicate my dev environment from my MBP M1 Pro on my new MBP M3 Pro I experimented with Migration Assistant - and was blown away!
I consider myself as an above-average user with a machine running multiple development focused things, for example;

• Docker
• Multiple JetBrains tools
• MySQL
• Parallells
• Oh My Zsh
• Homebrew package manager
• Xcode
• LocalStack
• Scrips to handle multiple clients' environments
• Non-standard resolution to avoid the notch

When migrating from an Intel MBP to the M1, I had much of the dev-stuff outside of /Users so the migration in that case had a pretty meagre result. Learned my lessons from that and now have all work-related stuff in /Users/<user>/Work.

I completely wiped the M3 getting back to the out-of-box experience (OOBE) and ran the Migration Assistant as part of the computer setup. The migration of ~95GB between the machines took 2,5 hours but the result was stunning! After login the first time I could run all my web-applications and dev tools without any issues at all!
Changing the machine name required som hands-on for the logic connecting apache and docker containers (that will be fixed in time for next migration to M5 or M6...)!

Only issues encountered (so far - knock on wood!):

• Activation required for several software packages (Microsoft Office, Bitdefender, Adobe Cloud and Parallells) requiring me to deactivate the licenses on the old machine - not surprising
• The time and date and format shown on the computer's lock-screen after reboot is stuck in San Fransisco time-zone and US format, I guess it's because I did not complete the OOBE since the Migration Assistant rebooted directly when the transfer was completed. If I login I get Swedish time and date format and correct time, even after logging out.

Wow!

 

[bingefeller]

@matsan, I have a question about using Migration Assistant - I have a lot of packages installed via Homebrew and have a "myenv" set up for using the terminal. I had a friend help me set these up and, as you can probably tell, I am not experienced in command line at all, apart from running some Python scripts. I also have a load of Apple Scripts too.

I have my current MacBook Pro backed up to a Time Machine. I hope to buy a new MacBook Pro, and am wondering if I use Migration Assistant will my new MBP have all the command line packages on my current machine? Essentially, will I be able to pick up where I left off? I"m assuming that's what you're saying in your post, but I'm not sure if you had to do any extra work to get everything working as it was previously.

 

[matsan]

@matsan, I have a question about using Migration Assistant - I have a lot of packages installed via Homebrew and have a "myenv" set up for using the terminal. I had a friend help me set these up and, as you can probably tell, I am not experienced in command line at all, apart from running some Python scripts. I also have a load of Apple Scripts too.

I have my current MacBook Pro backed up to a Time Machine. I hope to buy a new MacBook Pro, and am wondering if I use Migration Assistant will my new MBP have all the command line packages on my current machine? Essentially, will I be able to pick up where I left off? I"m assuming that's what you're saying in your post, but I'm not sure if you had to do any extra work to get everything working as it was previously.

Hi!
Sorry, but I guess the safe answer is "it depends"....
I didn't have to do anything to get the homebrew packages running on my new machine, they just worked!
On my old machine they were all installed to standard location /opt/homebrew/Cellar you can check your install with brew --cellar command.
BUT - You didn't specify your migration scenario - the migration I did was M1 -> M3 so both source and target machines were Apple Silicon. I don't know if this is the case of your migration, but I can see issues with the outcome of a migration Intel -> Apple Silicon.
Anyway, I recommend you keep a backup of your homebrew installation using brew bundle dump --file=Brewfile-20241124 (change date obviously). Unless your friend has done anything crazy installation-vise (like setting up different paths, commands etc) you should be able to recreate your installation of packages with this file after installing homebrew on your new machine.

Hope this Helps.

 

[bingefeller]

Hi!
Sorry, but I guess the safe answer is "it depends"....
I didn't have to do anything to get the homebrew packages running on my new machine, they just worked!
On my old machine they were all installed to standard location /opt/homebrew/Cellar you can check your install with brew --cellar command.
BUT - You didn't specify your migration scenario - the migration I did was M1 -> M3 so both source and target machines were Apple Silicon. I don't know if this is the case of your migration, but I can see issues with the outcome of a migration Intel -> Apple Silicon.
Anyway, I recommend you keep a backup of your homebrew installation using brew bundle dump --file=Brewfile-20241124 (change date obviously). Unless your friend has done anything crazy installation-vise (like setting up different paths, commands etc) you should be able to recreate your installation of packages with this file after installing homebrew on your new machine.

Hope this Helps.

Thanks for the reply.

My current machine is M2, so it hopefully won't be a problem.

I checked my brew installation and it's the same as yours, which is good!

I didn't know about doing the backup - but I will definitely do this, just in case something goes wrong.

Thanks again.

 

[rjalex]

Will be migrating a similar setup (full stack development tooling + homebrew + network mounts + external disks with symlinks) for a M1 -> M4 migrations. Cross fingers and thanks for taking time for sharing your experience.

 

[matsan]

Will be migrating a similar setup (full stack development tooling + homebrew + network mounts + external disks with symlinks) for a M1 -> M4 migrations. Cross fingers and thanks for taking time for sharing your experience.

🤞🏻 as proof of migration quality - I haven't opened my old M1 since the migration in September

 

[rjalex]

I also have an hourly incremental Carbon Copy Cloner 7.04 backup to an external SSD. Would that help in any way? Thanks again.

 

[matsan]

I also have an hourly incremental Carbon Copy Cloner 7.04 backup to an external SSD. Would that help in any way? Thanks again.

Honestly I have no idea.
Migration Assistant moved all data from the old machine to the new and I didn't have transfer any files myself.