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Orka Desktop 101: Create a Golden image with all your Software Dev Tools

By Andrew Bojak|

August 27, 2024

Simplified macOS development environments with Orka Desktop

Friends don’t let friends build dev environments from scratch. Consider us now friends.



It’s now easier than ever before to get your team set up with virtual machines (VMs). Having a consistent, reliable development environment is crucial for DevOps and dev workflows. However, achieving this can be a challenge, especially in large or distributed teams. Different team members may use different tools, versions, and configurations, leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies.



What if you could standardize your development environment across your entire organization in just a few clicks? With Orka Desktop, MacStadium’s free macOS virtualization tool, you can easily create and share OCI-compliant images with your entire team. It allows you to design your perfect dev environment with all your standard tools and settings.



Top benefits of Orka Desktop images

OCI-compliant images

OCI-compliant images follow a set of industry standards defined by the Open Container Initiative (OCI). On Orka Desktop, these images help ensure portability, standardization, and efficiency in VM workflows.

Easily share custom images

Orka Desktop allows users to create seamless workflows that let you run the same image on any device. Build and test your image locally, then effortlessly upload it to an OCI-compliant registry. The images are compressed, so a 90GB image becomes more like 15GB, making it more easily shareable with your team.

Onboard new team members faster

Onboarding new team members can be a tedious process, especially when it comes to setting up their dev environment. Ensuring that they have all the necessary tools and software installed can take hours, if not days. Orka Desktop makes the process painless by giving them a starting image with everything they need.

Get started on Orka Desktop with these pre-installed tools

MacStadium has created a new Orka image running Sonoma 14.6, which is currently available on GitHub. This image comes with popular developer tools pre-installed, including:



  • Appium
  • CocoaPods
  • FastLane
  • Git
  • Homebrew
  • Jenkins
  • Xcode



Orka Desktop’s starter image can be downloaded then tweaked based on your own needs. Once you have perfected the VM image, you can share your new and improved image with your team.

Download Orka Desktop to access sharable base images

Orka Desktop + MacStadium’s starter iOS Developer image can jumpstart you on your way to standardizing your development environments across your team to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and increase productivity. It's free forever so give it a try.

Already have Orka Desktop? Download the new Orka image here and start using it today! ghcr.io/macstadium/orka-images/Sonoma_ios:latest

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