Mac OSX: SooperLooper slgui hangs on startup

[upsided]

First, A Workaround

If you’re coming here from Google, the workaround is to turn on sharing in system preferences and share something, like your printer. Weird, but works.

The Bug

On Catalina (at least) SooperLooper GUI invariably hangs on startup because it cannot finish an mDNS lookup from some liblo call inside LoopControl::register_global_updates() (see loop_control.cpp). The sooperlooper server runs fine, without hang. It’s only the GUI that has this issue.

I’m not sure WHY this (mDNS lookup) is a problem, but I found the solution over at this stackoverflow question. Something about localhost vs machine name, etc.

Anyhoo, hope this helps development. Be nice if reverse lookup of host names wasn’t a thing at all; seems rather pointless in a localhost/lan situation.

A picture of a sample during slgui hang, showing mDNS taking forever (then failing):

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