Stata 14.2 crashing when using help command on MacOS 13.0

[Rhea Har]

My Stata keeps crashing when I type 'help' in the command window to be able to view the help files for a command. Is there a way to solve this issue?

[Farshad]

I have the same problem. Typing -help- in the command line closes the Stata 14.2 on macOS Ventura 13.0 (22A380) released a few days ago, on MacBook Air M2, 2022.

[William Lisowski]

These apparently reproducible problems should be reported to Stata Technical Services at

https://www.stata.com/support/tech-support/

Meanwhile, I'm going to avoid upgrading my M2 MacBook Air to Ventura for a while longer. I appreciate your sharing these problem reports. I can imagine how frustrating this can be.

Let me ask: since typing help in Stata's Command box crashes Stata, what happens if you open the Viewer window (from the View > Viewer menu) and type your help command into the dialog box at the top of the Viewer window, which initially contains "help help_advice". Does opening the Viewer window crash your Stata? If it doesn't, does typing a help command in that window crash Stata? What if you type a search command?

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

I was able to reproduce the problem. Every major update to macOS introduces the possibility of breaking something in older software. StataCorp's policy is to offer support for the current version of Stata as well as the previous version of Stata. However, we've unofficially supported even older versions of Stata when it's a simple fix. In almost every case, we have to code around new behavior. But the older an earlier version of Stata gets, the harder it is for us to support it because the hardware and tools to build it are often no longer supported or available. I took a look to see what was required to build Stata 14 and it requires tools and an OS from 8 years ago and hardware that we no longer have to run those tools. We'll see what we can do but please contact technical support for further guidance.

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

We have developed a solution to the Viewer crashing problem when Stata 14 (and Stata 13) is run on Ventura. Please contact Stata technical support for more information. We also worked around a Ventura bug with the print dialog that causes Stata to crash. That fix will be in the forthcoming official update for Stata 17.

[Kihwan Ji]

I have the same problem in my M1 Mac mini. Whenever I open the Viewer or type help, Stata 14.2 crashes on Ventura (13.4.1).
But Ventura (13.4.1) in my 2016 macbook pro 15 inch, Stata 14.2 never crashes.

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

Please contact Stata technical support.

[Tom Yates]

Do we know whether this problem persists if you upgrade from OS Ventura to OS Sonoma? Thanks.

[Ginzo Tsukimoto]

I could workaround this problem by typing 'man' instead of 'help'.

MacOS Sonoma 14.5