Broken Silence: Recounted Mac OS
Type | Division |
---|---|
Industry | Video games |
Founded | 2002 |
Defunct | 2011 |
Fate | Parent and the company dissolved, brand still used as distribution label by THQ Nordic |
Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Parent | DreamCatcher Interactive (JoWooD Entertainment) |
The Adventure Company was a Canadian video game developer and a former publishing division of DreamCatcher Interactive. It was sold to THQ Nordic GmbH in 2011 following DreamCatcher's parent (JoWooD Entertainment) assets being sold after entering administration.
History[edit]
The Adventure Company was first launched in January 2002 as a division and brand of DreamCatcher Interactive to distribute their adventure games titles under. The first title released under the new brand was The Cameron Files: Secret at Loch Ness which was released at the end of January 2002.[1] The Adventure Company has worked with many developers including: Kheops Studio, THQ, Microïds, and Cryo Interactive. In 2006 DreamCatcher Interactive became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Austrian video game publisher JoWooD Entertainment.[2]
I had the new Mac Office 2016 loaded and upgraded to El Capitan. At which point, Office starting barfing 10 times a day. Running the old Mac Office 2011 on El Capitan now. Not the worst thing, given how riddled with problems Office 2016 is. That silence was broken earlier this week when Tunic was showcased during the PC Gaming Show. No Linux support, only Windows & Mac OS? Bituser 17 June 2017 05:19. Apple is strongly messaging that you should switch shells. This is different from the last switch in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, when Apple switched the default to bash, but didn’t really care if you remained on tcsh. In fact, tcsh is still present on macOS. Apple’s messaging should tell us, that the days of /bin/bash are numbered.
On August 16, 2011, Nordic Games announced that it had acquired JoWooD, its products and brands and some of the companies' subsidiaries.[3] Following the acquisition it was announced that JoWood and the Adventure Company will become publishing labels for Nordic Games, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nordic Games Holding.[4]
Published games[edit]
Note: This list is for titles which The Adventure Company published. Re-releases of DreamCatcher Interactive games nor Nordic Games titles under The Adventure Company are not included.
Year | Title | Platform(s) |
---|---|---|
24 January 2002 | The Cameron Files: Secret at Loch Ness | Microsoft Windows |
9 May 2002 | The Mystery of the Nautilus | |
23 July 2002 | Dark Fall: The Journal | |
23 September 2002 | Law & Order: Dead on the Money | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
29 October 2002 | The Cameron Files: Pharaoh's Curse | Microsoft Windows |
19 March 2003 | Riddle of the Sphinx 2: The Omega Stone | |
17 October 2003 | Missing: Since January | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
28 February 2003 | Post Mortem | Microsoft Windows |
23 July 2003 | Dark Fall | |
30 September 2003 | Law & Order II: Double or Nothing | |
17 October 2003 | The Black Mirror | |
28 October 2003 | Traitors Gate 2: Cypher | |
17 November 2003 | Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon | Microsoft Windows, Xbox |
25 November 2003 | Mysterious Journey II | Microsoft Windows |
12 March 2004 | Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon | |
29 March 2004 | The Egyptian Prophecy | |
5 April 2004 | Forever Worlds: Enter the Unknown | |
29 June 2004 | Aura: Fate of the Ages | |
29 June 2004 | Missing: Since January | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
31 August 2004 | Dark Fall: Lights Out | Microsoft Windows |
23 September 2004 | Crystal Key 2 | |
15 October 2004 | Atlantis Evolution | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
3 December 2004 | Return to Mysterious Island | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
14 December 2004 | Sentinel: Descendants in Time | Microsoft Windows |
1 March 2005 | The Moment of Silence | |
15 April 2005 | Still Life | Microsoft Windows, Xbox |
24 June 2005 | Crime Stories: From the Files of Martin Mystère | Microsoft Windows |
5 July 2005 | ECHO: Secrets of the Lost Cavern | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
18 August 2005 | Voyage: Inspired by Jules Verne | Microsoft Windows |
31 August 2005 | Nibiru: Age of Secrets | |
October 14, 2005 | MISSING: The 13th Victim | |
27 October 2005 | Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None | Microsoft Windows, Wii |
20 December 2005 | The Mystery of the Mummy | Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS |
17 March 2006 | Keepsake | Microsoft Windows |
21 March 2006 | Crime Stories | |
2 August 2006 | Safecracker: The Ultimate Puzzle Adventure | |
16 October 2006 | Evidence: The Last Ritual | |
17 October 2006 | Sam & Max Season One | |
14 November 2006 | Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express | |
13 March 2007 | Hans Christian Andersen: The Ugly Prince Duckling | |
25 April 2007 | The Sacred Rings | |
29 May 2007 | The Secrets of Atlantis: The Sacred Legacy | |
6 June 2007 | Keepsake | |
3 July 2007 | Dead Reefs | |
7 August 2007 | Sam & Max Save the World: Season One | Microsoft Windows, Wii |
16 October 2007 | Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun | |
20 November 2007 | Next Life | Microsoft Windows |
26 May 2008 | Murder in the Abbey | |
2 June 2008 | Dracula: Origin | |
26 August 2008 | Outcry | |
5 February 2008 | The Experiment | |
30 September 2008 | The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft | Microsoft Windows, Wii |
2 December 2008 | A Vampyre Story | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
28 October 2011 | The Book of Unwritten Tales | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux |
References[edit]
- ^Walker, Trey (2002-01-10). 'DreamCatcher launches The Adventure Company'. GameSpot. Archived from the original on 2013-01-23. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
- ^'JoWooD to acquire Video Game Publisher DreamCatcher Inc'. euro adhoc. 2006-11-03. Archived from the original on 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
- ^'JoWooD & The Adventure Company, wholly owned labels of Nordic Games'. Nordic Games. Archived from the original on 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
- ^'Nordic Games Holding AB Group Acquires JoWood & The Adventure Company'. Nordic Games. 2011-08-16. Archived from the original on 2012-01-18. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
Apple has announced that in macOS 10.15 Catalina the default shell will be zsh
.
In this series, I will document my experiences moving bash
settings, configurations, and scripts over to zsh
.
- Part 1: Moving to zsh (this article)
- Part 2: Configuration Files
- Part 3: Shell Options
- Part 4: Aliases and Functions
- Part 5: Completions
- Part 6: Customizing the
zsh
Prompt - Part 7: Miscellanea
- Part 8: Scripting
zsh
zsh
(I believe it is pronounced zee-shell, though zish is fun to say) will succeed bash
as the default shell. bash
has been the default shell since Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.
This series has grown into a book: reworked and expanded with more detail and topics. Like my other books, I plan to update and add to it after release as well, keeping it relevant and useful. You can order it on the Apple Books Store now.
Why?
The bash
binary bundled with macOS has been stuck on version 3.2 for a long time now. bash
v4 was released in 2009 and bash
v5 in January 2019. The reason Apple has not switched to these newer versions is that they are licensed with GPL v3. bash
v3 is still GPL v2.
zsh
, on the other hand, has an ‘MIT-like’ license, which makes it much more palatable for Apple to include in the system by default. zsh
has been available as on macOS for a long time. The zsh
version on macOS 10.14 Mojave is fairly new (5.3). macOS 10.15 Catalina has the current zsh
5.7.1.
Is bash gone!?
No.
macOS Catalina still has the same /bin/bash
(version 3.2.57) as Mojave and earlier macOS versions. This change is only for new accounts created on macOS Catalina. When you upgrade to Catalina, a user’s default shell will remain what it was before.
Many scripts in macOS, management systems, and Apple and third party installers rely on /bin/bash
. If Apple just yanked this binary in macOS 10.15 Catalina or even 10.16. Many installers and other solutions would break and simply cease to function.
Users that have /bin/bash
as their default shell on Catalina will see a prompt at the start of each Terminal session stating that zsh
is now the recommended default shell. If you want to continue using /bin/bash
, you can supress this message by setting an environment variable in your .bash_profile
or .bashrc
.
You can also download and install a newer version of bash yourself. Keep in mind that custom bash installations reside in a different directory, usually /usr/local/bin/bash
.
Will bash remain indefinitely?
Broken Silence: Recounted Mac Os Download
Apple is strongly messaging that you should switch shells. This is different from the last switch in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, when Apple switched the default to bash
, but didn’t really care if you remained on tcsh
. In fact, tcsh
is still present on macOS.
Apple’s messaging should tell us, that the days of /bin/bash
are numbered. Probably not very soon, but eventually keeping a more than ten year old version of bash
on the system will turn into a liability. The built-in bash had to be patched in 2014 to mitigate the ‘Shellshock’ vulnerability. At some point Apple will consider the cost of continued maintenance too high.
Another clue is that a new shell appeared on macOS Catalina (and is mentioned in the support article). The ‘Debian Almquist Shell’ dash
has been added to the lineup of shells. dash
is designed to be a minimal implementation of the Posix standard shell sh
. So far, in macOS (including Catalina),sh
invokes bash
in sh
-compatibility mode.
Broken Silence: Recounted Mac Os 7
As Apple’s support article mentions, Catalina also adds a new mechanism for users and admins to change which shell handles sh
invocations. MacAdmins or users can change the symbolic link stored in /var/select/sh
to point to a shell other than /bin/bash
. This changes which shell interprets scripts the #!/bin/sh
shebang or scripts invoked with sh -c
. Changing the interpreter for sh
should not, but may change the behavior of several crucial scripts in the system, management tools, and in installers, but may be very useful for testing purposes.
All of these changes are indicators that Apple is preparing to remove /bin/bash
at some, yet indeterminate, time in the future.
Do I need to wait for Catalina to switch to zsh?
No, zsh
is available Mojave and on older macOS versions. You can start testing zsh
or even switch your default shell already.
If you want to just see how zsh
works, you can just open Terminal and type zsh
:
The main change you will see is that the prompt looks different. zsh
uses the %
character as the default prompt. (You can change that, of course.) Most navigation keystrokes and other behaviors will remain the same as in bash
.
If you want to already switch your default shell to zsh
you can use the chsh
command:
This will prompt for your password. This command will not change the current shell, but all new ones, so close the current Terminal windows and tabs and open a new one.
How is zsh different?
Like bash
(‘Bourne again shell’ ), zsh
derives from the ‘Bourne’ family of shells. Because of this common ancestry, it behaves very similar in day-to-day use. The most obvious change will be the different prompt.
The main difference between bash
and zsh
is configuration. Since zsh
ignores the bash
configuration files (.bash_profile
or .bashrc
) you cannot simply copy customized bash settings over to zsh
. zsh
has much more options and points to change zsh
configuration and behavior. There is an entire eco-system of configuration tools and themes called oh-my-zsh
which is very popular.
zsh
also offers better configuration for auto-completion which is far easier than in bash
.
I am planning a separate post, describing how to transfer (and translate) your configurations from bash
to zsh
.
What about scripting?
Since zsh
has been present on macOS for a long time, you could start moving your scripts from bash
to zsh
right away and not lose backwards compatibility. Just remember to set the shebang in your scripts to #!/bin/zsh
.
You will gain some features where zsh
is superior to bash
v3, such as arrays and associative arrays (dictionaries).
There is one exception where I would now recommend to use /bin/sh
for your scripts: the Recovery system does not contain the /bin/zsh
shell, even on the Catalina beta. This could still change during the beta phase, or even later, but then you still have to consider older macOS installations where zsh
is definitely not present in Recovery.
When you plan to use your scripts or pkgs with installation scripts in a Recovery (or NetInstall, or bootable USB drive) context, such as Twocanoes MDS, installr or bootstrappr, then you cannot rely on /bin/zsh
.
Since we now know that bash
is eventually going away, the only common choice left is /bin/sh
.
When you build an installer package, it can be difficult to anticipate all the contexts in which it might be deployed. So, for installation pre- and postinstall scripts, I would recommend using /bin/sh
as the shebang from now on.
I used to recommend using /bin/bash
for everything MacAdmin related. /bin/sh
is definitely a step down in functionality, but it seems like the safest choice for continued support.
Summary
Overall, while the messaging from Apple is very interesting, the change itself is less dramatic than the headlines. Apple is not ‘replacing’ bash
with zsh
, at least not yet. Overall, we will have to re-think and re-learn a few things, but there is also much to be gained by finally switching from a ten-year-old shell to a new modern one!
Next
In the next part we will look at the configuration files for zsh
.