Last week Baseline v2.0 was released, and its got some great new feature additions aimed at making the tool even more flexible. I’m excited to see folks use it in new and exciting ways.
If you’re not familiar yet with Baseline, it’s an MDM agnostic zero touch or light touch solution for macOS.
By leveraging swiftDialog, Installomator, and original code, Baseline provides an automated way to install applications and run scripts. Configure the behavior of Baseline via a mobileconfig or plist file. Baseline will install packages, scripts, and Installomator labels as defined in the configuration file.
You can find this tool on the Second Son Consulting Github page.
Baseline has always been capable of more than just initial workstation setup, and these new features aim to make those uses even stronger.
SwiftDialog Improvements
A while back, Bart Reardon added the ability to put icons on each line of a SwiftDialog list view. Baseline v2.0 brings this feature along, allowing you to define Icons per line item.
This feature is especially awesome, because the code was directly contributed by a Mac Admins community member to the project on Github. Big thanks to Drew Diver aka @grumpydrew or tiredsince1985
New Command Line Arguments
Baseline is a shell script, but the primary way of deploying it is typically by using an installer package. The package puts the script, and some other assets, in place and then launches the script by virtue of a LaunchDaemon.
With v.2.0, Baseline now has a handful of command line arguments which can be used when calling the script via Terminal, Self-Service, or however else you may run zsh scripts via macOS.
Point to a Configuration File
The --configuration option allows you to point Baseline directly to a plist file containing instructions on what you want it to run. Using this option, you can have multiple configuration files on disk and have Baseline run any of those files at any given time.
You could even write a wrapper script which generates your configuration file “on the fly,” giving you a very high amount of flexibility.
Silent Mode
The --silent option allows Baseline to run with no user interaction. All SwiftDialog components will be skipped, and Baseline will run even with no user logged in. This can be useful if you have a handful of apps that you know you can update without user disruption (like your IT tools, SwiftDialog itself, etc.). Even if you aren’t a scripting wizard, you can use this feature to run a list of Installomator labels and have useful log output to review whether things went as expected.
New Configuration Keys
There are a ton of new Configuration Keys available with Baseline v2.0, and you can read about all of them in the wiki or by reviewing the Release Notes.
Another fantastic community contribution was brought to us by Mykola Grymalyuk or @mykola . You can now choose to show a progress bar and/or progress bar display names on the Baseline list window which updates as items are processed.
You can now also disable the default “BlurScreen” option, and allow the “OK” button to dismiss the List View window.
Some other features have been added at the request of users, such as a “BailOutFile” which will stop Baseline entirely if any item results in that file being generated or the “LogOut” key, which will force a Log Out instead of a Restart.
SwiftDialog Keeps Getting Better
Bart keeps adding great new features, and as he does it means this project gets better as well. There are already great new additions in the latest SwiftDialog beta releases to make Baseline look even better and provide more information to users about what’s going on while software is deployed.
Thanks to Everyone That Helps Make This Tool Awesome
We’ve had a few community contributions to our guides on using Baseline with various MDM tools.
In addition to the contributions mentioned above, this release also had some code optimization offered by the awesome @donzuub .
I continue to be blown away by how helpful and vibrant the Mac Admins community is, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it.
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