On 23 May 2023, at 12:15 PM BST, I proudly presented at the MacAdmins UK Conference, on the following topic:

Erase-Install: A Tool for Upgrading and Reinstalling your Mac

March 26, 2018: the release of macOS 10.13.4 introduced a new resource in the macOS installer apps that allowed us to erase and reinstall the system using a single terminal command. I published a convenience wrapper script for that command to git the same day, naming it erase-install.sh, which was a poor choice as it turned out. Little did I know back then, that a continual saga of problems with Apple’s software update mechanism would prompt such a large number of desperate Mac admins to turn to erase-install to solve their macOS updating woes.

This presentation charts the evolution of the erase-install project, giving a short overview of its ever-increasing feature set, and describes what problems it is currently solving for hundreds of Mac admins. I then look at other mechanisms for updating macOS we may be able to rely on in the future, which will hopefully render erase-install well and truly Sherlocked. Finally, I talk about my experiences maintaining a popular open source project.

Resources

A PDF of the slides and presenter notes is available here.

The video of the presentation is also now available to view here: