Inform 7 on minimal 32-bit Linux

Not a problem so much as a solution.

I have an old 32-bit computer with a very small hard drive and very little RAM. A desktop-enabled OS will run on it, but doesn’t leave much disk space or RAM to do anything else, so a pure-CLI OS is preferable.

I downloaded i7 for it (the Linux CLI version of Inform 7) and had a hell of a time getting it to work. It worked fine on my 64-bit machine, but on my 32-bit machine, the inform6 compiler wouldn’t run, instead reporting a buffer overflow.

You might wonder why I would even want to run Inform 7 on a 32-bit machine if I have a 64-bit machine. The answer is simple: my 32-bit machine is tiny and cute as heck and I like carrying it around with me. Certainly not the best reason I’ve ever made a tech decision, but not quite the worst either.

So, in case anyone else was having the same problem – /usr/local/libexec/inform6 not working on a 32-bit Linux machine – here’s what I had to do to fix it. It was as simple as compiling the inform6 binary from source for my machine and sudo cp’ing it to /usr/local/libexec/inform6, overwriting the official binary in the process.

Or, in one bash snippet:

# Downloading and installing Inform 7 (skip if you already have it installed)
wget http://inform7.com/download/content/6M62/I7_6M62_Linux_all.tar.gz
tar -xzvf I7_6M62_Linux_all.tar.gz
sudo ./inform7-6M62/install-inform7.sh

# Downloading and building from the I6N compiler source
wget http://www.inform7.com/sources/inform6/inform6.zip
mkdir inform6
unzip inform6.zip -d inform6
sudo gcc inform6/*.c -o /usr/local/libexec/inform6

Hope it helps someone