Novelwriter doesn't work on Mac Os 10.13

[Aethondon]

Hi,

I run a 2012 macbook with OS 10.13 High Sierra because it crashes on anything newer and I like that I can repair this macbook. I would really like to use NovelWriter to edit a novel manuscript but it seems to be built on a much newer version of Mac OS and doesn't work on 10.13.

Are there any older releases or back-compatible versions I could use?

Many thanks in advance,

Donald

[vkbo]

Hi, the packaging for MacOS was set up by @Ryex, and I don't know the limitations. The DMG is built on MacOS 12. I am not a Mac user and don't own any Apple hardware of any kind, so there is relatively little I can do. I'm also having problems with the M1 release.

Your best bet is to install a Python environment on your Mac and then install novelWriter as a Python package.

See https://novelwriter.io/docs/int_started.html#installing-from-pypi

[Aethondon]

Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly and for your advice!

Donald

On Monday, 8 July 2024 at 12:09, Veronica Berglyd Olsen @.***> wrote:

Hi, the packaging for MacOS was set up by @.***(https://github.com/Ryex), and I don't know the limitations. The DMG is built on MacOS 12. I am not a Mac user and don't own any Apple hardware of any kind, so there is relatively little I can do. I'm also having problems with the M1 release.

Your best bet is to install a Python environment on your Mac and then install novelWriter as a Python package.

See https://novelwriter.io/docs/int_started.html#installing-from-pypi

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

[Ryex]

Yeah, sadly there isn't much to be done if the DMG crashes. Trying to maintain a build for MacOSX wouldn't be fun (though in theory it should be a simple as setting up CI to run the same build process on a 10.x variant)

Your primary option would be to install via pip.

pip install --user novelwriter

in theory you could also build your own DMG.

Steps to build a DMG

• Aquire Source (ie. https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter/archive/refs/tags/v2.4.4.zip)
• Extract source archive, open a terminal in the directory
• pip3 install -r docs/source/requirements.txt
• python3 pkgutils.py build-assets
• ./setup/macos/build.sh 3.12 x86_64 x86_64
• DMG should appear at ./dist_macos

[vkbo]

I may add that once you do have a Python environment on the Mac, updating novelWriter through pip is just a matter of running pip install -U novelwriter whenever there is a new release.

[Aethondon]

Sorry I'm pretty inexperienced with coding in general but I've installed PIP through homebrew and the command

pip install --user novelwriter

just comes up as command not found?

[vkbo]

Maybe you need pip3 install --user novelwriter instead? Not sure if Homebrew still distinguishes between Python 2 and 3 that way. It's common on Linux to have to add the 3.

[vkbo]

Yeah, sadly there isn't much to be done if the DMG crashes. Trying to maintain a build for MacOSX wouldn't be fun (though in theory it should be a simple as setting up CI to run the same build process on a 10.x variant)

MacOS 12 is the oldest available on GitHub Actions, so it would require even further steps to achieve. I'm hoping they keep 12 for a while since the build fails on 13.

[vkbo]

For the 2.6 Beta 2 release I had to abandon the old MacOS 12 build as it no longer worked. However, it seems to now work fine with just macos-latest, so I just changed it to that on both builds.

I haven't had any feedback from Mac users on whether the new images actually work, so it would be nice if someone could check? https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_6.html#macos

Or a more permanent link: https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter/releases/tag/v2.6b2

[vkbo]

Since there has been no feedback on this ticket, and it is no longer possible to build on these old MacOS versions on GitHub, I'm closing this.

I'm wondering what would be needed to build novelWriter as an app in MacOS instead? I have been tinkering with embedding Python in executables. Windows will move to such a solution in 2.7, although Python releases pre-built embeddable versions for Windows, but not Linux and MacOS.

[github-actions[bot]]

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