Gnome-inform7 6L38/6M62 IDE now running on modern Ubuntu & Fedora OS

Very interesting so 6L38 worked before but 6M62 has a problem with the menus. That helps narrow things down quite a bit. Spinning up a VM for Linux Mint is not a big effort nor is making the build itself. That said, the fact that it worked for 6L38 tells me there is a change to the code that introduced this behavior. I may be able to see what that difference is by comparing the code for 6L38 to 6M62. Rather than building a 6M62 specifically for Linux Mint, let me put some effort into seeing what may have changed between the two builds. I will keep you updated!

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trouble is for Debian 10, whose 64b packages are now amd64… it’s possible to repack into amd64.deb ?

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

Personally I have not tested on Debian, only Ubuntu and Fedora. Generally x86_64 versus amd64 are different names for the same thing. So assuming the proper library versions are available on your distro, it should work in theory :slightly_smiling_face:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAMD64Faq

trouble is, x86_64 ni always segfaults here and amd64 ni never segfaults… for now.

this is the ni whose always segfault here:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3051776 gen 13 2016 ni
ni: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.26, BuildID[sha1]=02a8ac3b08afbbcc7951dc34dd0b917f04afe6a5, stripped

and this is the working amd64 ni:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pigi pigi 3403624 mag 29 2018 ni
ni: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=45a0638d8640fb9d737fbdcbdc59ddbbfa9b8ce1, stripped

I agree that both are x86_64, but are clearly two different ni…

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Great info! The ni used in the debs is actually a precompiled binary I obtained from the official Inform7 website. It appears it is statically linked agains a different kernel than you are on. Do you have a link to the ni you are using or a deb package that contains it? Also, may I ask a few questions:

  1. Is the user interface for gnome-inform7 opening up for you?
  2. Is the segfault encountered only when you attempt to compile?
  3. Which debian package have you attempted to use?
  1. yes, only issue is that crashes when I run a glulx build without fully closing the precedent run (I’m not sure to have explained well…)

Next time, I look into the 'terp, eventually changing also that binary.

  1. damn well, YES ! solved putting that 2018 ni binary.

  2. dunno I know now. so many install/disinstall/mucking around, I fear is a sort of mishmash of various flavour of 6M62 (and no, I don’t want to attempt a full cleaning & reinstalling, too many brittle things around, IMVHO.

Now I must get ready for a political meeting (Italian politics… still “keep your dagger ready and watch your six” grade, trust me), so I’ll reply either late in night (CET) or tomorrow.

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Nice work! :slightly_smiling_face: It sounds like you have some improvement on your issue by replacing the ni. If it is possible, can you point me to the location of the ni binary you are using? I would like to download it for myself and when I have time package a gnome-inform7 Debian 10 build using that ni binary. It would be nice if other authors do not have to manually replace the ni in the future.

This ni is already packaged in the official (that is, inform7.com), that is:

http://inform7.com/apps/6M62/I7_6M62_Linux_all.tar.gz

I suggest navigating in the archives inside with a file & archive manager (I use mc, because, well, for me CLI interface and keyboard is much faster than mouse) and extract that ni from the relevant sub-archive.

HTH and
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Thanks Piergiorgio! I did a quick check and the ni in both debs I posted for Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 is quite old. I pulled the tar and compared against the x86_64 ni and found the 2018 version your debug info referenced. It looks like this may be a requirement for Debian 10. Appreciate your help digging into the details. I will attempt to build a new package that includes the updated ni specifically for Debian 10 when I get some free time.

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I dunno if I have time to doing advanced (ab)use of the binutils… less so decoding the output (we’re talking nm(1), readelf(1) and objdump(1)…)

Anyway, here is attached the results from a quick readelf(1) probing of the current (2018) ni, if you know how to read it, that is.

ni.readelf.txt (8.8 KB)

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I just got an Ubuntu laptop as a present, so I thought I’d install I7, but got an error:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 gnome-inform7 : Depends: libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0 (>= 1.5.1) but it is not installable
                 Depends: libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (>= 1.3.10) but it is not installable

Where can I get those libraries, and how can I install them (being “Not installable” – or is that just to denote that they aren’t known to apt?)?

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I have the same issue as Bjorn, in that I have Ubuntu 19.10 but there are still package dependency issues that seem unresolvable. I appreciate that work was done to fix it for modern Ubuntu, but any chance we can get an update or help with this issue (same as Bjorn’s, so I won’t repost the error)? **I’m not at all a Linux guru, sorry!

@EarleyGrave I do have a build for 19.10 but it is not well tested. Any possibility you would like to be the first to give it a try and report back on how well it works?

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@Eleas Hi Bjorn, Ubuntu no longer carries those particular libraries and the work to update gnome-inform7 to modern libraries is in progress according to @ptomato. I have been working to provide work arounds to allow the software to continue to function in the short term for modern operating systems as gnome-inform7 is reworked. May I ask what version of Ubuntu you are running? I do have a build for 19.10 but it is untested and I am not sure it would be helpful to you without knowing your OS version.

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@interactivefiction: I’m on Ubuntu Focal Fossa, dev branch, release 20.04. I understand the implications; if this issue stems from not running LTS, that’s on me. But I kinda hope it doesn’t matter.

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I’d be happy to!

Ok I have not attempted any builds on 20.04, but it is possible 19.10 build would work. I am going to post that soon so it might be worth giving a shot at installing it on 20.04. If you are not comfortable installing it, when I can get a free moment I will give it a shot myself. I need to get a chance to setup a VM with 20.04 so I can try the experiment though so it may take me a few days though before I can do it.

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Ok sounds great and thank you! Let me dig up the system I had that build on and I will update with a link to the deb once it is posted.

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Cool. I was nearly to the point of downgrading to 18.04 just to be able to use your other workaround lol (though I don’t mind doing so, my OS install is fairly fresh still, so no pressure about your new test build).

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Ok I found the build and it does run on 19.10 but it is a bit of a hack at the moment. I am going to try to get the install process to be hands off so you dont need to mess around setting up custom library paths and stuff. My current deb does not pull dependencies and in order to make it run you need to export a custom LD_LIBRARY_PATH to get things working. Will update you once I get something a little more polished.

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