Broken Silence: Recounted Mac OS

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The Adventure Company
TypeDivision
IndustryVideo games
Founded2002
Defunct2011
FateParent and the company dissolved, brand still used as distribution label by THQ Nordic
HeadquartersToronto, Ontario, Canada
ParentDreamCatcher 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.

YearTitlePlatform(s)
24 January 2002The Cameron Files: Secret at Loch NessMicrosoft Windows
9 May 2002The Mystery of the Nautilus
23 July 2002Dark Fall: The Journal
23 September 2002Law & Order: Dead on the MoneyMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
29 October 2002The Cameron Files: Pharaoh's CurseMicrosoft Windows
19 March 2003Riddle of the Sphinx 2: The Omega Stone
17 October 2003Missing: Since JanuaryMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
28 February 2003Post MortemMicrosoft Windows
23 July 2003Dark Fall
30 September 2003Law & Order II: Double or Nothing
17 October 2003The Black Mirror
28 October 2003Traitors Gate 2: Cypher
17 November 2003Broken Sword: The Sleeping DragonMicrosoft Windows, Xbox
25 November 2003Mysterious Journey IIMicrosoft Windows
12 March 2004Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon
29 March 2004The Egyptian Prophecy
5 April 2004Forever Worlds: Enter the Unknown
29 June 2004Aura: Fate of the Ages
29 June 2004Missing: Since JanuaryMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
31 August 2004Dark Fall: Lights OutMicrosoft Windows
23 September 2004Crystal Key 2
15 October 2004Atlantis EvolutionMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
3 December 2004Return to Mysterious IslandMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
14 December 2004Sentinel: Descendants in TimeMicrosoft Windows
1 March 2005The Moment of Silence
15 April 2005Still LifeMicrosoft Windows, Xbox
24 June 2005Crime Stories: From the Files of Martin MystèreMicrosoft Windows
5 July 2005ECHO: Secrets of the Lost CavernMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
18 August 2005Voyage: Inspired by Jules VerneMicrosoft Windows
31 August 2005Nibiru: Age of Secrets
October 14, 2005MISSING: The 13th Victim
27 October 2005Agatha Christie: And Then There Were NoneMicrosoft Windows, Wii
20 December 2005The Mystery of the MummyMicrosoft Windows, Nintendo DS
17 March 2006KeepsakeMicrosoft Windows
21 March 2006Crime Stories
2 August 2006Safecracker: The Ultimate Puzzle Adventure
16 October 2006Evidence: The Last Ritual
17 October 2006Sam & Max Season One
14 November 2006Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express
13 March 2007Hans Christian Andersen: The Ugly Prince Duckling
25 April 2007The Sacred Rings
29 May 2007The Secrets of Atlantis: The Sacred Legacy
6 June 2007Keepsake
3 July 2007Dead Reefs
7 August 2007Sam & Max Save the World: Season OneMicrosoft Windows, Wii
16 October 2007Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun
20 November 2007Next LifeMicrosoft Windows
26 May 2008Murder in the Abbey
2 June 2008Dracula: Origin
26 August 2008Outcry
5 February 2008The Experiment
30 September 2008The Hardy Boys: The Hidden TheftMicrosoft Windows, Wii
2 December 2008A Vampyre StoryMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS
28 October 2011The Book of Unwritten TalesMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux

References[edit]

  1. ^Walker, Trey (2002-01-10). 'DreamCatcher launches The Adventure Company'. GameSpot. Archived from the original on 2013-01-23. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
  2. ^'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.
  3. ^'JoWooD & The Adventure Company, wholly owned labels of Nordic Games'. Nordic Games. Archived from the original on 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
  4. ^'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.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Adventure_Company&oldid=999358796'

Apple has announced that in macOS 10.15 Catalina the default shell will be zsh.

Broken silence: recounted mac os x

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/bashare 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’ ), zshderives 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.