If you’ve used a Mac in the last decade or so, you’ve likely been prompted to configure Time Machine, macOS’ built-in automated backup solution; simply connect your backup disk (or use certain network attached storage devices) and Time Machine will automatically make incremental backups of your machine. In the event that your computer’s lost/stolen, its hard drive is corrupted, or you simply deleted that super important file, Time Machine makes it easy to restore your computer’s previously healthy state.

Where Time Machine is less convenient is in the case of developers: modern development practices often rely on dependency management tools (e.g. Composer, npm, etc.) to pull in third-party dependencies. Instead of including full copies of external libraries, developers can say “my application relies on package N at version X.Y.Z”, and the dependency manager can download the necessary code as a build step. This is great for keeping third-party assets both versioned and out of version control, but for the developer working on multiple projects it poses a bit of a problem: you end up with a ton of project dependencies on your machine!

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