Linux Inform 7 IDE a little crash prone

I know that there’s already a topic similar to this one, but that’s from 2017, so maybe there’s some kind of an update. I’m trying to make a game, but the IDE keeps on crashing, usually after trying to compile something. Before the crashes were manageable, but now they are happening almost every other time I press the play button. I don’t think it’s just my computer, as I experienced similar issues (but to a somewhat lesser extent) on another device.

Of course, this is a… substantial… obstacle to speedy development. I see that there are two main potential solutions to this: switching to the Windows edition of the IDE using Wine, or switching IDEs and using Inform 7 via the command line with another editor. But directly accessing the command line with the Flatpak version of Inform 7 is a bit of a pain. Using the Windows edition certainly could work, but I’m not sure how transferring all the files over would work. Are there any alternative solutions?

Looks to me like you have a good grasp of the possibilities.

If you go the Wine route, moving your files shouldn’t be hard. The Linux IDE will have created a directory named Inform (directly under your homedir by default, if I recall correctly). In it, you’ll see a bunch of directories named project.inform and project.materials.

Run the Windows IDE under Wine and create a junk project. It will also create an Inform directory; I think the default is /Users/your_login_id/Documents/Inform.

Copy all the contents of the former to the latter.

If you have installed any extensions for global use (as opposed to for a specific project under its project.materials/Extensions directory) there would be another step. I’ll go into it if you say it’s relevant.

This Inform on the command-line post is for 6M62 but remains a good reference to the project directory structure. It’s outdated for building from the command-line, but the official docs now provide documentation on compiling on the command-line.

And my i7-helpers repo has a script to create a project and one to compile.

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In case you haven’t tried this yet, consider clearing or heavily trimming the skein. I don’t think that’s ever fully solved my issues with the Linux IDE, but I was surprised at the extent to which it helped…

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i’m having this problem, but only if i compile something twice without changing the code. and only sometimes! it’s such a strangely specific error

I have frequent, but not unbearable, crashes when compiling. Sad to say I can’t provide useful information: they seem totally unpredictable to me, no pattern at all.

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