Compiling TextMate I: Minimum Compilable Product

TextMate has been a mainstay of my development tool belt for a while now, and it’s one of the last truly native macOS editors still around. But development stalled, and with no updates since 2021, I figured – “How hard could it be to compile it myself?”

Following the README.md file, I face-planted immediately into an issue. So here’s part 1 of trying to compile TextMate.

Dependencies? Didn’t I just install them?

TextMate’s official README makes the build process look simple:

After installing dependencies, make sure you have a full checkout (including submodules) and then run ./configure followed by ninja, for example:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/textmate/textmate.git
cd textmate
./configure && ninja TextMate/run

The ./configure script simply checks that all dependencies can be found, and then calls bin/rave to bootstrap a build.ninja file with default config set to release and default target set to TextMate.

This, however, results in an error saying that ./configure cannot find dependencies I’ve already installed, because it doesn’t check homebrew include/library paths for those dependencies. Some quick fiddling later, that problem was solved.

^{This was solved in 340efec Modified configure to add homebrew, fixed library search.}

Ancient Ruby

Next issue? Ruby. Specifically, system Ruby. Some of the files in /bin were still using the default Ruby installation that ships with macOS:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/Current/usr/bin/ruby

Apple started adding a deprecation notice to the system Ruby installation starting in 10.15 – you’ll see this when you open up irb if you’re still using it:

WARNING: This version of ruby is included in macOS for
compatibility with legacy software.

In future versions of macOS the ruby runtime will not
be available by default, and may require you to install
an additional package.

So, I swapped it out with /usr/bin/env ruby in the files that were still using it –

• bin/expand_variables
• bin/extract_changes
• bin/gen_build
• bin/gen_credits.rb
• bin/gen_html
• bin/gen_test
• bin/update_changes

With that change, TextMate finally compiles! 🎉

^{This was solved in 060ebc3 Changed ruby to env ruby instead of system ruby.}

Wait, where’s the gutter?

Right, so I’ve got TextMate to compile – but notice how the gutter is completely missing? And how the file browser’s background isn’t quite right? I’m not sure what’s causing that, but I want to assume it’s some NSColor deprecation thing that’s causing it to behave this way. Although, it’s just a hunch, and I’m not sure what to think yet. Some… creative… debugging with Apple’s Quartz Debug tool and its “Flash screen updates” toggle tells me that whatever’s rendering the gutter, is, in fact, updating the right bits on screen at the right time – it’s just completely invisible for some reason.

Gutter aside, some more digging led me to line 72 in the FileBrowser framework:

Frameworks/FileBrowser/src/FileBrowserView.mm : 72

_outlineView.backgroundColor = NSColor.clearColor;

Changing clearColor to something like redColor showed up immediately, and using windowBackgroundColor fixed the issue. But I’m not sure if this is the fix – I figure that it was set to clearColor to let the window background show through, but for some reason the window itself is stuck in this gray color. Although, I could be completely wrong here and the issue could be something else entirely.

Next Steps

Well the first obvious next step is to fix the gutter and file browser. Beyond that, I don’t think anything else is broken here – which is one hell of an ode to a superb codebase.

I’m not some seasoned macOS developer – hell, I’m 18 and just figuring this out as I go. But I love TextMate, and I don’t want to see it die just because it’s stuck in the past.

Commits –

• 340efec Modified configure to add homebrew, fixed library search.
• f3da120 Changed db.close to @db.close.
• 060ebc3 Changed ruby to env ruby instead of system ruby.

P.S. Allan, and everybody else on the TextMate team, you guys rock – you built something insanely ahead of its time.