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Mathematica v12.2 breaks the compatibility of Workbench (v10.1.822)

Posted 3 years ago

I had already raised the same issue in a separate discussion, but after a bit of research (digging), I decided to start a new one because I am now more confident that it is not a simple bug but a systematic compatibility issue.

It looks like WRI has gradually developed paclet tools (including documentation tools) for years. With Mathematica 12.2, the paclet tools seem to have become quite "mature". It has a complete new packages bundle PacletTools under SystemFiles/Components, and it includes DocumentationBuild. I guess it might enable us to build documentation files even without Workbench (for small-scale projects).

Two unfortunate things:

  1. Obviously, the compatibility with the current public version of Workbench is broken. For example, when you try to build your documentation, Workbench tries to load DocumentationAssets, which is intended for WRI insiders (according to PacletTools, it should never happen). It is said that they have internally much advanced (and most likely compatible) version of Workbench inside WRI. I hope they release an updated public version which is compatible with 12.2.

  2. The documentation of PacletTools (and included DocumentationBuild) is poor. You cannot apply those new tools to the documentation files generated with Workbench; many deprecated functions and so on. I could not yet figure out how to work around the problems.

POSTED BY: Masso Chailly
14 Replies

Masso Chailly's reply and link are very appropriate. It looks like Workbench is being deprecated and abandoned. This is somewhat contrary to the Workbench Wolfram web page: https://www.wolfram.com/workbench/.

Note also that R&D Live videos at: https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2593151 feature Wolfram developers using Visual Studio or Sublime Text.

It appears Workbench and IDE capabilities with a debugger and Project tools like those in Eclipse will not be provided for the Wolfram Language.

A formal statement of the supported and preferred IDE from Wolfram would be appreciated along with a set of tools / plugins.

POSTED BY: Chuck DeCarlucci
Posted 2 years ago

With Mathematica 13, it seems that all these headaches and sufferings from Workbench are gone. Take a look at https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2427576?p_p_auth=SSI9jMrH

POSTED BY: Masso Chailly

The only information I received are the usual download instructions, specifically the link: https://support.wolfram.com/27221

I do not recall anything other than using the instructions in the link. I do notice now the link specifies using Install New Software... under the Eclipse Help menu. I apologize it has been sometime since I fixed this and must have not used the Eclipse Check for Updates.

POSTED BY: Chuck DeCarlucci

I believe the most recent Wolfram plug-in for Eclipse is version 10.1.1087. A case initiated because of Eclipse builds failing on missing files was resolved with a plug-in update to 10.1.1087: use Help : Check for Updates to see and download the current installed version and download an update for the plug-in in Eclipse.

Also recently PacletInfo.m key word MathematicaVersion has been replaced with WolframVersion. All my PacletInfo.m files started generating a warning on MathematicaVersion. See https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/PacletObject.html.

POSTED BY: Chuck DeCarlucci
Posted 2 years ago

Strange. I can only get 10.1.1064 from https://www.wolfram.com/workbench/. My Eclipse (2021-06 v4.20.0, Help > Check for Updates) does not indicate any available update, either.

Do you have any special site specified in Eclipse > Preferences > Install/Update > Available Software Sites > Wolfram Workbench Update Site by any chance?

POSTED BY: Masso Chailly

just checked, workbench and core have different versions on my system.

enter image description here

POSTED BY: Martijn Froeling
Posted 2 years ago

Interesting! And even more strange. In my case, both Core and webMathematica have the same version. Are you on Windows? I'm using Mac if it matters at all. What's going on here?

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POSTED BY: Masso Chailly

@Masso Chailly Thanks for the heads up. I think I'll stay on 12.1 and the previous Workbench for a bit longer. It's not great, but it's functional.

POSTED BY: Jeffery Henning
Posted 3 years ago

Yup, it's been doing this since Mathematica v11. Oh not the paclet aspect. My issue was that when the workbench froze and quit. My mathematica install would forget the license and then I have to log on site to get the activation key

POSTED BY: Ron Anderson
Posted 3 years ago

I did (well, the build number of what I tried is 10.1.1065 from the technical support). I think it does provide emergency fixes of the issues with Mathematica v12.2. At least, it works, more or less, for my custom documentation files. However, several glitches are still noticeable immediately:

  • The DocumentationTools palette has several bugs (e.g., putting “Example Delimiter”)
  • The ".wl" file extension is not supported for PacletInfo (it must be PacletInfo.m).
  • It does not respect/recognize the recent formats/fields of PacletInfo.wl.
POSTED BY: Masso Chailly

The public update is 10.1.1064. You have a higher release. Are you Wolfram Internal? Do you know why Wolfram doesn't share the latest Workbench with the userbase ( who supply their revenue )?

POSTED BY: nilo de Roock
Posted 3 years ago

I'm just a normal user, but luckily, can afford for the technical services. I don't know why the build number of mine is slightly higher. Maybe the difference is not big. My impression from various Internet blog/forum posts is that building custom documentation files, probably the main purpose of Workbench, is highly non-trivial and requires lots of external resources like Java, etc. Maybe too technical for end users like me. Maybe that's why the public release of Workbench is lagging behind Mathematica.

One piece of good news is that they are gradually improving the DocumentationTools (it already works pretty well just with Mathematica, even better than with Workbench in some sense) and DocumentationBuild within PacletTools starting from v11.x, and I notice that with v12.2 those codes are sort of getting matured. I hope, some day, we can build the mid-scale documentation files (I'm dealing with 500+ files) without Workbench. Today, I heard the announcement of v12.3. I just hope that things got improved.

POSTED BY: Masso Chailly

I'm seeing a new update to Wolfram Workbench Core (10.1.1064). Anyone tried this yet? I see absolutely no information on it from Wolfram. Better support for MM12? Does it fix 12.2 issues?

POSTED BY: Jeffery Henning
Posted 3 years ago

@martijn has shared his similar troubles: https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2214983 I leave a remark here because the issues are clearly from the outdated Workbench.

I have contacted WRI, and they confirmed the issues. They say that the developers are working on a fix and a new public version of Workbench is coming sooner or later. Well, it was about a month ago.

What I noticed was that the documentation pallet was not available in 12.2 unless I started Mathematica from eclips and the errors pointed to the lack of these tools. In the MathematicaSources of workbench the DocumentationTools and DocumentationBuild were present.

I didn't dare put the resources from Workbench distribution to the system installation directory. In fact, I am doing the opposite. I use DocumentationTools coming from Mathematica 12.2, which looks better and easier to launch even without Eclipse/Workbench, to edit my documentation files. Then, I build them using Eclipse/Workbench.

My Workbench version, which I obtained directly from WRI, is slightly higher than the public version. It is still outdated and problematic. It just builds my documentation files -- I cannot even edit my files within it.

There is DocumentationBuild as a sub-package of PacletTools of Mathematica 12.2. I was thinking of directly -- without Workbench -- using it to build my documentation. No luck yet.

As it is, making integrated documentation is too much of a headache, at least, for the moment. I have an impression from Mathematica 12.2 that they are trying improve it by integrating the required tools right into the system. I hope this transition period ends soon.

POSTED BY: Masso Chailly
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