I’m thinking about getting back into interactive fiction, but I’m having trouble just installing Inform 7. Is the most recent version really from 2015? Anyone have a guide on how to get the needed dependencies?
I saw the thread GNOME Inform 7 6M62 on Fedora 29 (& other recent distros?), but I can’t find an actual list of dependencies to install in order to get this working.
Yes, really! Don’t let that scare you - Inform7 is a stable platform that many people use, and it is far from abandoned. It does tend to go several years between major updates.
That said, Graham Nelson has announced there should be an update this year, and there is an eventual plan for it to go open source.
Okay, I’ve been poking at this and I’m about 75% of the way there.
Take a look at https://github.com/katre/docker-inform
Current status:
Take a look, I’ll keep poking at it and eventually make it easier to use.
Fellow Linux user here (though not Fedora). It sounds like you’re having similar problems as I did under Linux Mint a few months ago. The “can’t save” problem was solved for me when I installed the outdated version of libgoocanvas3, which may or may not have the same package name under Fedora.
The basic issue is that the GNOME version of Inform is built to work with the GTK libraries, and the GTK team wants to push everyone to move from GTK version 2 to GTK version 3. At least some distros are no longer distributing (at least some of) GTK 2 through their standard software repositories at all, so installing an older version of the component that Inform depends on may not be easy for you. Under Linux Mint, I was able to find a .deb package that provides an older version of the necessary component, which may be the thing that would help you.
On the other hand, maybe Fedora is still distributing an older version of the necessary component, either instead of or alongside the newer version! I don’t know, since I haven’t used Fedora in a long time. But downloading the Fedora package and trying to get yum to install it should also try to install anything it depends on – have you tried using yum in a terminal to see whether it tries to pull in more dependencies, and what it complains about if it can’t install them?
Apologies if I’m going over ground that you’ve already covered – I’m just trying to make sure the basics have been exhausted already. I hope that’s helpful!
Okay, I’ve improved this a lot: take a look at https://github.com/katre/docker-inform
The actual docker image is stored in DockerHub, so it’ll download on demand for users. There’s a helpful shell script that maps “$HOME/Inform7” into the container so that you can save games and have them persist on your real home directory.
There’s still a problem where settings don’t persist: it appears that not everything needed is installed. I might poke at that at some point.
Anyone interested: take a look!
I created deb and rpm builds for ubuntu 16.04, 18.04 and fedora 29 if you would like to try the package out I would appreciate your help testing it out and also a quick report back on your experience installing it. More details and links to test deb/rpm here: Gnome-inform7 6L38 IDE now running on ubuntu 18.04 and fedora 29 (rpm & deb link in thread)