Mac/Linux Support (Command-Line Only)

[jceddy]

This has two parts/approaches:

1. It's possible this could be run via Wine, with users specifying the location that Arena running under Wine dumps the real-time log file in app.config. I have no idea how this works, but might be able to do some testing under a Linux VM at some point.

2. I can create a command-line only version of the application that takes some parameters and dumps static text/html/other output files for the user to look at. I could implement that using .NET Core as an executable that can run natively on Linux (and Mac, too, I believe).

Just a note: There seem to be some projects for developing cross-platform GUI applications on top of .NET Core, but I don't know much about any of them.

[jceddy]

Pinned this because I'm going to be working on it next. It's possible I will end up moving everything to a Unity client, and if so this will probably end up being a longer-term change.

[jceddy]

Looking into using noesisgui as a front-end to a .NET Core application.
Seems like a lighter-weight option to doing a full-on Unity application, that can still support Max and Linux.

[jceddy]

Started setting up an OSX VM today that I can test with.
Based on some investigation/testing, it looks like I will likely end up creating a Xamerin Mac application using NoesisGUI for the front-end that will exist side-by-side with the existing Windows WPF application.
My current plan is to break out shared code into a separate library that can be consumed by both applications...we'll see how successful I am. :)
Also planning on adding the Mac application to this main github solution instead of creating a separate project. We'll see how successful I am at that, as well. :)

[jceddy]

It turns out that OSX is unusable in VirtualBox without the extension pack (which for licensing reasons, I can't use on my main machine).

That's a big pain in the butt. I'm going to have to set up a VM for testing with elsewhere (or maybe just get a cheap mac mini or something), but it will seriously slow down development.

[jceddy]

Looking into procuring a cheap Nano/Mini PC that I can run an OSX VM on.

[jceddy]

Put this on Hold until I can get some kind of test environment set up.

[jceddy]

I created a new issue (#73) for GUI support. I'm taking this one off hold. We'll create a command-line-only version of the program that runs cross-platform.

[jceddy]

Version 1.0.6.0 includes a little test app for Mac.
I will try to find a volunteer to test it as a proof-of-concept.