Installing Dialog on macOS using Homebrew

vickio · September 1, 2019, 6:48pm

First, let me say how impressed I am with Dialog! It’s taken some effort to wrap my mind around the language concepts (coming from 20+ years of OO programming), but I think I’m getting the hang of it. I’ve not written IF before, mainly because I enjoy Z-machine games but dislike Inform 6/7, so I’ve found Dialog to be quite compelling.

For any Mac users looking to install Dialog using Homebrew, I’ve created a formula for that purpose. Dialog doesn’t (yet) meet the notability requirements for the official repo, but I will submit it there as soon as it does. In the meantime, I’ve created a tap for this purpose and will do my best to keep it updated as new versions are released.

Homebrew users can install the Dialog compiler and debugger (dialogc and dgdebug) using this command:

brew install vickio/dialog/dialog-if

Copies of the Dialog standard library and debug library will be installed to this location:

/usr/local/share/dialog-if/

If you want to review the formula before installing, you can find it here:

github.com

vickio/homebrew-dialog/blob/master/Formula/dialog-if.rb

class DialogIf < Formula
  desc "Domain-specific language for creating works of interactive fiction"
  homepage "https://linusakesson.net/dialog/"
  url "https://hd0.linusakesson.net/files/dialog-0h01_0_30.zip"
  version "0h01"
  sha256 "7a5fe94fdef3d5d7749517b971dfd70d2ae8d7bcf1d3be949060e557a201a1ae"

  def install
    chdir "src" do
      system "make"
      bin.install "dgdebug", "dialogc"
    end
    doc.install Dir["docs/*"]
    prefix.install "readme.txt", "license.txt"
    pkgshare.install "stdlib.dg", "stddebug.dg"
  end

  test do
    (testpath/"test.dg").write("(program entry point) hello world")
    system bin/"dialogc", "-tz8", "test.dg"

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BadParser · April 18, 2020, 1:27am

For those who already installed Dialog as described above, I can confirm that upgrading to the latest version of Dialog Dialog version 0j/04 (library 0.38) using:

brew upgrade dialog-if

works swimmingly under MacOS Catalina (10.15.4). I did need to install the command line tools first using:

xcode-select --install

(I’m guessing that’s because this is my first Dialog update since “upgrading” to Catalina from Mavericks.)

Also, as indicated in the OP, I had to copy the standard and debug libraries to my usual working directory for Dialog projects.

Thank you so much to @vickio for making it so easy and of course to @lft for the amazing work that is Dialog!

Skinny Mike

vickio · May 17, 2020, 12:00pm

Note that version 0k/01 was mistakenly labeled version 0k04 in this formula (I manually changed the letter but not the number from 0j/04). If you are running brew upgrade dialog-if to get version 0k/02, but are getting an error saying that 0k04 is already installed, use brew reinstall dialog-if instead to get back on track.

BadParser · August 22, 2020, 5:26pm

@vickio,

Thank you as always for maintaining this formula! 0k/06, lib 0.43 successfully brewed here (MacOS 10.15.4 Catalina).

Skinny Mike

hlship · August 22, 2020, 6:50pm

Seconded! So happy to just see it work when I brew upgrade.

lkcampbell · May 18, 2021, 1:06am

Thanks for your work on this. I am going to play around with Dialog this week. Fun fun!