Extension Wrangling

I’m just a simple country doctor, Jim, not a silicon valley engineer! Or, to borrow a different ‘60s reference, somethin’s happenin’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.

I’m trying to get a handle on exactly which I7 extensions are 6L38 compatible, and which aren’t. At various times I’ve downloaded a lot of extensions onto my Mac, and they all show up in the Extensions pane, including the moldy old ones. In order to use the Public Library functionality, I figured I should start over.

So I dragged Inform to the trash. I then reinstalled it from the download .dmg. But when I run the new install, I still have about 185 extensions installed! Clearly, dragging the app to the trash didn’t uninstall them.

So I use the Search field in a Finder window to search for one of the ones that I know is not working – Intelligent Hinting. It shows up on the hard drive exactly once, in a download folder that the Inform app doesn’t know about. (In fact, renaming this folder has no effect. The next time I launch the IDE, all of the extensions are still displayed.) Somehow a new install of the Inform IDE is able to access old extensions, even though they are literally nowhere on the hard drive. Or so it appears.

My question is fairly simple, or at least I hope it’s simple: How do I get rid of all of these damned moldy extensions so I can start with a clean set (either manually downloaded or grabbed via the Public Library)?

Open the Library folder in your home directory, trash the Inform sub-folder. (Finder doesn’t search there.)

There is no Library folder in my home (jimaikin) directory. It goes right from introjava to mLan. Looking on Macintosh HD, I find a Library folder, but there’s no Inform folder in it, so that can’t be right either. There’s nothing under Show View Options to suggest that there are hidden folders.

I’m not trying to be obtuse, honestly. I just don’t know what to do. Can you offer a more detailed suggestion?

There should be a “Show Library Folder” option under “Show View Options” if you’re using a recent version of OS X. Otherwise you may have to use the Terminal to make the Library folder visible: see http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/22/access-user-library-folder-in-os-x-lion/.

I’m still on 10.8.5, and don’t plan to upgrade again. Thanks for the link – that bit of code solved the problem.

The Public Library does seem to have a few items that still have compatibility problems. In particular, Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed don’t compile, because it requires Glulx Text Effects but has a table with different headings. But I’m certainly closer than before to having a functional library.

The Mac IDE also has a “Show Extensions Folder” menu option.