Hi,
Just upgraded my Mint 18.3 install to Mint 19.0 and now Embrio won't start. I've pasted the output from an attempt to start Embrio from the terminal.

ian@Mintian /opt/Embrio $ sudo mono Embrio.Desktop.exe
[sudo] password for ian:

Unhandled Exception:
System.InvalidOperationException: Could not detect platform. Are you missing a platform assembly?
at Eto.Platform.get_Detect () [0x000d5] in <4cc14cdaaa614f28bdf75cc01d0e995c>:0
at EmbrioLinux.Desktop.Program.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000] in <69d7881babba450ebde5cda717ac8c75>:0
[ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.InvalidOperationException: Could not detect platform. Are you missing a platform assembly?
at Eto.Platform.get_Detect () [0x000d5] in <4cc14cdaaa614f28bdf75cc01d0e995c>:0
at EmbrioLinux.Desktop.Program.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000] in <69d7881babba450ebde5cda717ac8c75>:0

I tried reinstalling, which seemed to work okay. But it seems libwebkit and libwebkit-cil are no longer available in Mint 19.0. Below I've pasted the result of my attempt to install them.

ian@Mintian /opt/Embrio $ sudo apt install libwebkit-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package libwebkit-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
libwebkitgtk-dev:i386 libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-dev:i386 libwebkitgtk-dev libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-dev

E: Package 'libwebkit-dev' has no installation candidate
ian@Mintian /opt/Embrio $ sudo apt install libwebkit-cil-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package libwebkit-cil-dev
ian@Mintian /opt/Embrio $

Luckily I have two other distros installed that still work fine with Embrio, so no biggy for me.

:-( Ian

Hi,
Sorry I haven't replied earlier, in the middle of moving house so haven't had a chance to keep up with all the questions I post on forums!

Mint is based on Ubuntu, and Embrio works fine on the previous version, 18.3. There doesn't seem to be anything in the release notes that would be related to the problem, and I can't find anything about issues with libwebkit on the net. I'm guessing you aren't the only developer using it, so somebody somewhere must be having the same problem. Maybe it's just a bit early yet. Dunno really.

In a similar vein I also tried Embrio on Manjaro, which seems to be the flavour of the month at the moment (according to distrowatch.com). It is based on Arch Linux, so nothing to do with Ubuntu or Debian. Same error though, verbatim.

Ubuntu, and Debian based distros, seem to be the most popular, for non-geek users, or people who want to move away from Microsoft for whatever reason, or just want to try Linux because it's free and all the software is free. In fact five of the top six distros (based on number of downloads) are Debian and/or Ubuntu based. Arch and Fedora are pretty popular too, but from my understanding you have to be a bit more geeky to go for one of them. Distros like Slackware and OpenSuse are strictly for the afficionados.

I agree it's difficult to support multiple platforms, and in the end maybe it's not worth it. Ninety percent of PC users run Windows, the next eight percent run MacOS, and a princely two percent run Linux in all its varieties. So it may just not be worth supporting Linux, or all flavours of Linux. You might consider going open source but that may not fit in with your business model.

Maybe just supporting Debian based versions would be a viable scenario. But, as in the case with Mint 19.0, even doing that is problematic.

My experience of using Embrio on a few different distros is that the interface is a bit flaky. Some of the functionality that works fine under Windows doesn't always work under Linux. For instance dragging a node type from the left hand menu and dropping it in the agent canvas doesn't work under Mint. The only way to add a node in Mint is to right click the canvas, and hold the button down, and select the node you want. In KDE Neon (also Ubuntu based) however the click and drag functionality works. Go figure. I have also had (also in Mint), after expanding the node to edit the code, the expanded window refuses to collapse again. All the editing functionality still works, it just won't collapse. Then it does. All a bit frustrating.

Not sure if any of the above helps. Just some ruminations and reflections on my part. I really like Embrio, I like the concept and I like the project methodology it encourages. It is a great tool. But it seems I'll have to cross back to the dark side (Windows) to use it.

Cheers,
Ian

Well, I've now installed Manjaro (along with all my other distros...) as I've found it's quite a bit faster than Mint. Even web pages seem to load faster.

So, tried Embrio again. After a bit of fiddling (learning how to install Arch packages) I got to the point where the command would do something. I now get an error message that indicates that there is a package missing; webkit-sharp. I checked my packages, and I have webkit2-sharp installed, and it seems to be the only option. If I click OK Embrio starts, sort of. I see the agent canvas, but no sidebar, so I can't do anything. I'm surprised it even got that far with the webkit package missing.

So, it looks like Embrio needs to use the later version of webkit to run on Linux.

Cheers,
Ian