Ancestris disappeared and other woes

[cosfordparker]

I'm running Big Sur on a 2015 Macbook Pro.  I loaded Ancestris without difficulty and loaded with a gedcom some difficulty.  Everything worked fine as long as I stayed on the main screen, but moving off of that screen - e.g., preferences - completely froze Ancestris.

This morning I found Ancestris has completely disappeared.  The icon is gone, the application is no longer in launchpad or listed in Applications. A search finds some Ancestris files on my HD, but nothing to run it.

Wierd.

[Zurga]

Thank you to try Ancestris.

Did you install Ancestris version 10 or version 11 ?
How many individuals do you have in your GEDCOM file ?

By default, Ancestris uses 1Gb of memory. This could be not enough for big GEDCOM files.
Ancestris loads the entire file in memory, it is one of its limits.
When the program freezes, this implies usually that the memory used is too low.
If you uses a 64b Java installation, you can add more memory to the program in the preferences. Do it before open a GEDCOM file.

I can't tell you why Apple makes Ancestris disappear.
Perhaps it is a new function of Apple who uninstall unapproved application when a crash is implied.
You can launch Ancestris from the Ancestris/bin directory, launch in a console the script "ancestris"

Please read our documentation to recreate a launcher and an icon in the dock :
https://docs.ancestris.org/books/user-guide/page/step-by-step-installation-on-macos#bkmrk-docking-ancestris-in

Zurga

[cosfordparker]

Thank you, Zurga, for your insights.  I am using Ancestris version 10 and the gedcom has about 1200 people.  When I start the program, I have nearly 8 GB of memory available, but I think you are suggesting it is Java's memory allotment (heap?) that may be causing the problem?

I've uninstalled Ancestris and Java.  I reinstalled Java, but used 15 rather than 8.  Then I reinstalled Ancestris.  It starts and runs very smoothly, has not disappeared, but continues to lock up on Preferences.  I've increased Java's heap twice, ulimately to 1GB, but the problem continues.   

[Zurga]

Did you notice a no entry sign in the bottom right ?

Could you send your log file to me (zurga at ancestris dot org) ?

You can find the log file by following the documentation : https://docs.ancestris.org/books/user-guide/page/software-files-and-user-settings-files

The Java Heap could be set with launch parameter, but I'm not sure this is the problem.

Zurga