Will there be Linux support available?

[I3ladeDragon]

I use Ubuntu 20.04 and remember needing Wine to install the old NBTExplorer.

I LOVED that program and wish to use this one!

That said, Wine causes conflicts with a program we use for a web interface on my Bungeecord network.

Even if I cannot use this, I love that the ol' NBTExplorer is getting a reboot! <3

[tryashtar]

Hey there. Thanks for your post. I would love to support Linux but unfortunately, I have no experience with that kind of thing and don't really have the means right now to learn/develop/test it. So without help or anything, I'm sorry to say this will not be a priority for a good while

[I3ladeDragon]

Sounds good! Hopefully someone randomly decides they feel the need to help port it sometime! hahaha! Keep up the good work in the meantime!

[MestreLion]

Care to check if the following was done? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47285243/

The 3 top voted answers seem very promising...

[MestreLion]

Thanks!!! I've made several attempts using wine, mono, dotnet, when rushing trying to run it with. I'll do it in a more methodological way so we can investigate the issue.

Meanwhile, my googling showed that ".NET" is actually 2 very distinct APIs, with very distinct cross-platform support:

• .NET Framework, older and full-fledged, which mono handles quite nicely. Deprecated by Microsoft (circa... 2018? 16? 20?)
• .NET Core, newer, slimmer, replaced the above around version 5. MS itself provides cross-platform via dotnet but for fewer components on Non-Windows. Poorly (or not at all) supported by mono

So, what exact framework / components / platform / etc NBT Studio is or uses? What are its dependencies?

I can feed you with any tests required on the Linux side, thanks for being open to this!

[tryashtar]

Yeah, sorry I was not very clear about that. NBT Studio uses .NET 5 (so "core," although that name was dropped as framework became obsolete). This is mostly an arbitrary choice on my part; I updated the project from framework, but not for any particular reason besides newer=better.
I was able to run it through wine on my Linux Fedora VM, only after installing a couple random .NET things from Microsoft.

[MestreLion]

Yeah, I believe mono can't run .NETCore/.NET5 software, only 4.x Framework, and its successor, dotnet from Microsoft, has no Winforms on Linux (and it seems it won't ever have, not even on .NET6 when mono will be merged to dotnet. Sad.). Microsoft is promoting a new GUI API to replace Winforms (MUIA or something), but A) Developers would have to port their code; B) There's no guarantee that this new API will be available to linux at launch.

So, for now it's either reverting back to 4.x Framework for the sake of mono compatibility (would that require much/any code change?), at least for 1-2 years to see how cross-platform .NET6 will really be (or a better solution arises), or use wine with a given set of .NET addons (care to document which ones you had to install to make it run in your Fedora?)

[MestreLion]

.NET Core (or simply .NET 5+) is the future and the road ahead, no question about it. But... that's very new technology with very little cross-compatibility for GUIs/Desktop apps such as NBT Studio. Even for Windows Winforms was only available in .NET Core since version 3, in the end of 2019!! That's very little time for support and compatibility spread and settle.

[tryashtar]

I'm pretty sure it was this link: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-5.0.11-windows-x64-installer

I don't know why C# doesn't seem to have any good UI technologies. Sadly, I only know winforms, but I've been trying to learn WPF. Even still, that is also windows-only, at least officially. I don't know anything about mono/wine.

I don't really want to revert the .NET 5 port. I'm very sorry about all of this.

[MestreLion]

I was able to successfully run it under wine!

Here are the needed steps:

• Get a really modern wine. The one in Ubuntu's 18.04 repositories is not enough. I installed latest wine 6.0.2 from the wine repository using the official instructions
• Download the .NET 5 Runtime for Desktop Apps, Windows version, x64 and install it using wine (wine64 windowsdesktop-runtime-*-win-x64.exe)
• Run NBT Studio with wine: wine64 ./NbtStudio.exe

Have fun!

[MestreLion]

I also wrote a simple installer / runner with all the needed commands, for a semi-automated installer. It sets up the wine repository and dependencies using commands adapted from the official sources:

#!/bin/bash

# https://github.com/tryashtar/nbt-studio

########################################################
# Install Wine 6 (maybe 5 works too, who knows?)
# Check if already integrated with seten

# https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

### if Ubuntu 18.04, need extra packages from OpenSuse. They're already available in 20.04
wget -qO- 'https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/Release.key' | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-add-repository --no-update 'deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/ ./'
####

wget -qO- 'https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key' | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-add-repository --no-update 'https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/'
sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y --install-recommends winehq-stable
##########################################################

# This is optional, but I prefer to keep my wine "bottles" isolated from each other
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.local/share/wineprefixes/nbtstudio

# .NET 5 (formerlly .NET Core (up to 3.x), successor of .NET Framework (up to 4.x))
# https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download
# Windows, .NET 5.0 (or later), .NET Runtime
# https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/5.0/runtime
# Windows, Run Desktop Apps (not Console or Server), Download x64

# Automation:
# https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-install-script

# Create and configure the bottle before installing .NET
wine64 wineboot 

# Install the .NET Runtime
wine64 windowsdesktop-runtime-*-win-x64.exe

###################
# Download and extract latest NBT Studio
# https://github.com/tryashtar/nbt-studio/releases/latest

wine64 ./NbtStudio.exe

@tryashtar , would you be interested in a PR to include such script in NBT Studio? I could give it a better polish, add some sanity checks and verifications, auto-select the needed requirements (i.e., check if Ubuntu 18.04 or later), add a CLI for --help, etc...

[tryashtar]

That is awesome!