Erase-install - the Swiss Army Knife of Upgrading and Reinstalling macOS

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. Graham Pugh 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 he 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 will chart the evolution and unlikely success of the erase-install project, give an overview of its ever-increasing feature set, what problems it is currently solving for hundreds of Mac admins, and finally, 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.

[@julesjacklin]

Thank you to all who developed this tool. Great work, Graham! This tool automates several processes and provides essential asset management workflows for reassigning devices that were not previously available.

[@buckmanriver]

This tool is game-changing for macOS update and deployment and re-deployment automation. Thank you for your working on this project!