[BUG] Using the Designer on a Mac

Ignition
1

Hi all,

As a lifetime Windows user, I've recently been trying out my workflow on a mac. After a couple of months of mac-usage, I'm impressed to see every part of my workflow being improved, except for 1, most important thing: Ignition development.

Ignition takes proud in being supported on all platforms, but there are some bugs I see in MacOS that I don't see in Windows. The main ones being:

  • Sudden crashes, without warning where the Designer just shuts down.
  • The whole application is not focused, and it does not get refocused by clicking on it. I have to click on another app and then back to the Designer before I can click on anything again.
2

If you've become comfortable with Mac's Unixy flavor, you'll probably be comfortable in Linux, too. And the problem reports for Ignition with Linux are rare. (I haven't had any trouble at all since v8.1 was released.)

2 Likes
3

Yes, I have been wanting to try Linux as well!

However, I'm wondering if IA would be looking into these bugs, since they do support Designer for Mac. And also wondering if other people are use Macs and maybe have some best practises.

4

I'm going to guess that Apple makes it difficult. (While I have to admit their hardware is nice, I despise their "closed garden" business practices.)

2 Likes
5

Hope this one gets resolved if we ever manage to get a macOS/arm build released. It's probably JXBrowser/Chromium crashing because it's running via Rosetta.

Haven't seen this one, but I don't spend a lot of time in the Designer (or even on my Mac much any more). Open a support ticket to officially report it?

2 Likes
6

Have you tried to run Ignition Linux version on WSL2 rather than a VM? It allows running Ubuntu and Widows side by side. I think it gives a better development environment! I didn't try to run Ignition but did try MS code for other development.

7

WSL/WSL2 is great if your primary OS is Windows... but that ain't Phil.

4 Likes
8

That is similar to running Linux in a VM. Since I only ever run Windows itself in a VM, it seems a bit ridiculous.

9

Oh thought your primary development system is window. Of course it doesn't makes sense for Mac.

10

My primary development system isn't Mac. It's Linux. Kubuntu 20.04, at the moment. Soon to be Kubuntu 22.04. Ergo my suggestion above.

11

Thanks for the update. WSL2 allows installing kubuntu as well. May be a useful information for Windows users, WSL2 is quite convenient tool on windows which allows switching between Windows and Linux easy.