Troubleshooting and Known Limitations

This chapter collects the extension’s current limitations and the handful of problems that come up often, with their fixes.

Known limitations

  • The frotz and frotz-release engines need dfrotz on your PATH or in binDir. Unlike dgdebug and dialogc, it is not bundled on any platform yet.

  • When a .skein file changes on disk, the extension offers to reload it, but there is no finer "merge from disk" beyond that.

  • Dynamic State and Trace require the dgdebug engine, and neither works for a command that ends on a single-keystroke prompt.

  • Export Web Page needs aambundle, from AAmachine, in addition to dgdebug and dialogc.

  • An export configuration cannot be edited through the wizard — remove it and add it again, or edit dialog.json directly.

  • Intel Macs and Linux on ARM have no bundled toolchain; install Dialog yourself (see Installing the Dialog IDE Extension).

"dgdebug not found", or a command that does nothing

The toolchain is missing or was not found. Either your platform has no bundled toolchain, or the bundled one did not resolve.

Put dgdebug and dialogc on your PATH, or add a binDir to dialog.json pointing at the directory that holds them (see Pointing at a specific toolchain). binDir wins over everything else. aambundle is only needed for Export Web Page, and dfrotz only for the frotz engines.

A .dg file "isn’t being compiled"

  • Check that some sources category covers it. The extension shows an Explorer badge and a notification for any uncovered .dg file, with a one-click fix.

  • Check the file name. A something.<format>.dg suffix restricts the file to that one build target.

  • Check the ordering. Categories are concatenated main, test, debug, library, and the first matching rule wins — a rule you expected to fire may be shadowed by an earlier one.

See Organizing Your Sources for all three.

The Skein and the files on disk disagree

Saving a skein is always explicit, so the two can drift. If you edited the .skein file outside the editor, accept the reload prompt. If you changed source, run Replay or Replay All to re-check the blessed responses against the new code.

Where things are written

What Where

Skeins

*.skein at the project root. Commit them.

Compiled story files

Wherever each export configuration’s output points.

Web export

out/web/, plus a .zip in out/.

Frotz session builds

A temporary directory, rebuilt each time a frotz session starts.

Getting help

The Interactive Fiction Community Forum has a thread for Dialog IDE: https://intfiction.org/t/dialog-ide-0-0-1/81465.