OS X Lion

Installation & Configuration Mac OS X
#1

Hi All,

I am running the developer’s preview of Lion. At this point Ardour crashes every time I attempt to open a session or create a new session. What is the state of Ardour for Lion?

PS. I realize that Lion is beta software and that any behavior problems I see while using might be with the OS itself not with any particular application.

Thanks,
Ben

#2

@paul

Just for reference, I am looking at finally replacing my MBP with a MBA after they are updated in a few weeks, so I may have access to Lion to give a bit a troubleshooting on at that time.

@OP

Yea what Paul said obviously:) Pretty much consider Ardour unsupported on Lion at this time is my advice, sorry.

   Seablade
#3

@ben.kansas: none of the Ardour developers have access to Lion, and we do not build it on any system other than Tiger at present. We may upgrade to Snow Leopard as a build platform soon. We have seen other reports of a crash on Lion, and the information we got suggested that it is either a bug in Lion or in GTK, the GUI toolkit that we use on all platforms.

#4

Is there anything us non-programmers can do to help Lion development?

#5

At the moment no, sorry.

Seablade

#6

A quick update on Lion:

The crash occurs in the Gtk library which Ardour/Mixbus uses to draw stuff on the screen.

Gtk is used by many other OSX apps, and the Gtk developers are in the process of fixing the problem. Last I heard, they already solved the crash problem, and are now working on some subtleties in the window resizing so that their fixes to Lion are also applicable to Tiger and earlier builds. This is a strength of open-source development: we aren’t left in the dark whether the fix is underway; instead we can see the issue being sorted in “real time”. (or fix it ourselves if isn’t getting addressed)

In normal development, if you find a crash like this, you have to change your app to accommodate the bug. It’s a quick fix, but it has a couple of consequences: firstly, if the problem is ever fixed in the library then you have to remember to remove your “patch”. Secondly, you’re not encouraged to tell anyone else about the problem, so other developers spend time and effort solving the same problems instead of being innovative with their products. Open-source development may look slow in comparison, but a bug found in one piece of software can solve problems for dozens or hundreds of other products.

Hope I didn’t get too geeky there…

Maybe all you wanted to know was this: a Lion fix is coming soon. :slight_smile: