Rev 3.0 crashing on OS X too (as well as Vista and Linux)

[Chipp Walters]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 4:31 PM, J. Landman Gay
<jacque at hyperactivesw.com> wrote:

> But I'm really starting to think it's
> hardware. He's crashing at random times, nothing really reproducible, while
> performing common tasks others do all the time without issues.

And if he can't create a reliable recipe for the crash, then it could
be bad memory. I'd suggest getting a memory checker and having it run
overnight.

That said, it appears Bernard is crashing on all 3 platforms with
great regularity. I'm using Rev 3.0 on WinXP on a fairly complex
project-- and I've seen it 'hang' a few times-- but I suspect it's the
IDE, not the engine-- and typically when I'm doing something I'm not
supposed to (like debugging Rev's script editor). For the most part,
it's been stable for me and I continue to use it daily.

I don't dispute it doesn't work for Bernard.

Something Richard Gaskin mentioned, I believe at the RevMasters Summit
awhile back, might shed some light. I don't remember his exact words,
but to paraphrase he said designing an application was significantly
harder than designing a tool. A tool should allow for a desired
outcome to be performed without crashing. An application should
prevent a user from taking any path which prevents the desired outcome
from being performed-- and should never crash.

I think I've always thought of Rev as a tool. I know if I improperly
code something, it can crash. That said,  if I do improperly code a
crash, then I can usually back up to where my coding has problems, and
then replicate and document the crash or anomolous behavior. I usually
can also find a work around to get around it-- and if I can't then I
need to wait for RR to fix it.

That said, I don't think the engine should ever crash, for whatever
reason. But, the IDE is a different story-- and until it can run in
it's own thread outside of any influencing 'other' scripts-- I doubt
it can be made super robust.

Certainly this doesn't provide immediate help for Bernard. But, I
might suggest he consider posting some of the code he's trying to run
in order to see if there are some obvious scripting errors being made,
which might take the IDE and engine down.

Also, Peter's suggestion of using MC is a great one for isolating
where things are going south.