I noticed that when building an extension, and the exact source code is used on Windows and on a Mac, the IDE does not respond to the Mac version. It should turn on the Testing button as soon as the minimal template is in place for an Extension Project. Windows works fine, Mac stays disabled. I am running Inform 7 1.68 on Mac Monterrey.
Does anyone know of any bug or feature that would cause this symtom?
Coming from your other topic, have you triple-checked all the formatting niggles that @StJohnLimbo listed? I wrote an extension. Now what? - #7 by StJohnLimbo
I assume you probably did, and they’re in the text which you’re pasting into both venues.
If that’s the case, I might try a bit of copying and pasting in stages for the Mac version (i.e. don’t copy the whole text. Copy a bit of it, paste it over, then the next bit, repeat). And/or just deleting and then retyping a few lines manually, particularly the finicky bits St John mentioned.
I don’t know how often or when the app checks for the satisfactory formatting for an extension app, but sometimes this kind of thing can be teased into activating by not using copy & paste, or using it only partially. Sometimes just the act of typing can trigger it.
-Wade
Good idea. I will give that a try. I understand how that sometimes works. I will try to get an enabled Test button as first goal. Thanks. (I had about given up on being able to test extensions.)
I’ve found that sometimes cut-and-paste transfers stuff that’s invisible in the IDE but messes up compilation- I recently spent an hour chasing an infuriating bug- or so I thought- to discover that this was the issue (for anyone interested, I pasted in an invisible ÿ character to an I6 inclusion, which then threw the compiler at I6 compilation stage with an ‘illegal character’ error)
I would definitely try directly typing in a minimal example rather than pasting anything and see what happens.
drpeterbatesuk,
Yes, I have had similar issues in the past. I will be trying that approach soon.
I will post the results. I really would like to get examples in extensions to work.
-abc
I count him braver who overcomes his desires, than he who conquers his enemies,
for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
– Aristotle
To those who have been helpful:
I created a new Extension Project and TYPED IN the example in the documentation, about Ducking. At no point did a test option come up.
I created a second EP anxdTYPED IN StJohn’s example, and at no time did a test option come up.
The header remains inscrutably grey and disabled (The install button works.)
Since the button says ‘Test Example’ I put in StJohn’s test example, but again, nothing.
I think I am resigned that we have a 64-bit Mac issue vs Windows issue and that Extensions tests are not available to me.
In another thread, @Zed helpfully linked to a previous topic about this:
The pull request mentioned in that post is here:
The request was accepted, so I think the issue should be fixed in the newest releases, but it might not have been backported to previous IDE versions. You could try upgrading to the newest version of the IDE that comes with Inform 10, and then either port your project to Inform 10 or choose an older compiler version in the settings.
StJohn,
Thanks for this. I only know about Inform 7, ver 1.68. Is Inform 10 the same language
as I7 but a different version?
I count him braver who overcomes his desires, than he who conquers his enemies,
for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
– Aristotle
| StJohnLimbo IFComp 2020 Participant
January 11 |
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In another thread, @Zed helpfully linked to a previous topic about this:
Extension Projects (Mac IDE) Inform 7
Looks like with the release of the 64-bit update, the release process pulled in an updated version of intest, which is responsible for identifying and running the test cases. This binary changed its expected arguments to include the root folder of the project. Unfortunately, the IDE is still trying to invoke intest using the old signature, and therefore failing silently. I’ve opened a PR with a fix into the OSX IDE repo ( here ) if anybody is curious.
The pull request mentioned in that post is here:
TobyLobster:master ← benthicmaw:extension-projects-mac-ide/54492opened 05:51PM - 17 Mar 22 UTC
benthicmaw
+13 -9
Resolves the issue described [here](https://intfiction.org/t/extension-projects-…
The request was accepted, so I think the issue should be fixed in the newest releases, but it might not have been backported to previous IDE versions. You could try upgrading to the newest version of the IDE that comes with Inform 10, and then either port your project to Inform 10 or choose an older compiler version in the settings.
I’m not surprised you’re confused!
Inform started life as a very low-level language, akin to a hybrid between the C language and assembler code for the virtual Z-machine computer, from which form it rapidly matured, becoming slightly higher-level in the evolution, through versions Inform 1 to Inform 6.
Inform 7 is really a new language that was originally to be called Natural Inform (which is why its compiler is still called ni.exe) but was ultimately christened Inform 7. Inform 7 is connected to Inform 1-6 not only through a common author but by being the first step in a multi-stage compilation process by which source code written in Inform 7 still usually (although no longer exclusively) passes through a form expressed entirely in the Inform 6 language.
The versions of Inform 7 itself have been labelled in a number of different ways: as element-like names such as ‘Iron’, letter/number combinations such as ‘6M62’ and strings of number/period such as ‘10.1.2’. See here for a full list.
In addition there have been numerous iterations of the various integrated development environments (IDEs) that host the Inform applications to facilitate authoring. I think the 1.68 you’re referring to is the version of the Mac IDE, not the Inform language.
TLDR: as usual, it’s what Zarf said 
Yes. The update didn’t affect much except extension compatibility, which got pretty messed up.
OK,
I’ll give that a try. I’ll download Inform 10 and see if I can test extensions.
Thanks.(I’ll mark this as a solution if all goes as planned.)
I cannot find Inform 10. I see github has Inform 9, but not 10. The App Store has Inform for Macs, but again, not the Inform 10 version for Mac. Any suggestions as to where it is?
I don’t have a Mac to test, but this should be the right version: https://github.com/ganelson/inform/releases/download/v10.1.2/inform_10_1_2_macOS_1_82_3.dmg
(= the third link under the “Assets” dropdown in the 10.1.2 release field on this page: Releases · ganelson/inform · GitHub)
Yes, that downloaded and ran fine. I now see a enabled Test button in my Extensions projects. Thanks very much. Now I only need to learn how to test extensions. 