AWS is the most widely used cloud service in the world and provides a collection of services that can be leveraged by developers to build their applications.  To manage the various AWS services, you can use either the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface. However if you want automate your development environment setup using scripts, the AWS CLI is your preferred tool.

In this article, you will learn about AWS CLI and find out how to install it on your macOS in 2 simple steps.

In my earlier article, we looked at how Homebrew simplifies the management of software on the Mac Operating system. You can use Homebrew to automate your development environment setup. Read more about Homebrew here.

The AWS Command Line Interface is an open source tool built on top of the AWS SDK for Python that provides commands for interacting with AWS services. All the functionality provided by the AWS Management Console are also being provided from the AWS Command Line Interface tool. The AWS CLI is immensely helpful when you want to automate the resource management process by writing shell scripts, so that it can be reused over and over again by different set of developers.

Installation Steps

Open the Terminal window in Mac and run the below command to install Homebrew —

/usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”

Run the below command to install AWS CLI –

brew install awscli

For AWS CLI, you must have Python installed on the system as a prerequisite. However you will notice that when Homebrew installs the AWS CLI, it will install a number of dependencies of awscli as well including python.

$ brew install awscli
==> Installing dependencies for awscli: readline, sqlite, gdbm, openssl, xz, python3

That’s it. You are all set to start using AWS CLI on your MacOS.

Conclusion –

The AWS CLI provides direct access to various AWS services’ APIs. You can explore the AWS service’s capabilities with the AWS CLI, and develop shell scripts to manage your resources.

Categories: AWS, MacOS