Notes on installing on Catalina

[charlietomo]

I just setup a new Macbook Pro, running Catalina 10.15.7 and getting Investoscope 3 and Investoscope Update to work was not as straightforward as I had hoped. Leaving some notes here in case it is useful for someone.

1. Investoscope 3 is not available in the app store any more, even in my "Purchased" list. I transferred the .app from a backup, put it into my Applications folder and then when running it had to authenticate with my Apple credentials (of the account I originally bought Investoscope with). Then it runs. I seem unable to change the default location for where data is store (which is annoying) - I get an error message; any help here appreciated. Error is "Invalid data folder / The selected folder is on a disk that is not suitable for user data".
2. It is possible to import holdings from a backup, so you have instruments and holdings. This will not include historical data.
3. Download Investoscope updater and edit line 6 of investoscope.py to include the correct path to the data folder. This was harder to find than expected. I managed to find mine at /Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.investoscope.Investoscope3/Data/Library/Application Support/Investoscope 3
4. Install requirements for Investoscope Updater, this is at least sudo pip3 install requests (I did this over a little while and can't remember if there was anything else).
5. Update line 3 of script to usr/bin/python3 which reflects the location of Python3 on Catalina.
6. Run Investoscope Updater - it should now run and update instruments :-)

I am getting a couple of errors and my coding skills are not yet up to fixing them:

​/private/var/folders/37/vzx7pkfs76s5447sgvn0j9c00000gn/T/AppTranslocation/91E0BB27-CB3A-4D4E-A5DD-4B3F419B796E/d/Investoscope Updater.app/Contents/Resources/investoscope.py:57: SyntaxWarning: "is not" with a literal. Did you mean "!="?
if process.returncode is not 0:

and

/private/var/folders/37/vzx7pkfs76s5447sgvn0j9c00000gn/T/AppTranslocation/91E0BB27-CB3A-4C4E-A5DD-4B3F417B796E/d/Investoscope Updater.app/Contents/Resources/qapi.py:59: SyntaxWarning: "is not" with a literal. Did you mean "!="?
if len(code_market) is not 2:

I also see some of these but this may be linked to instruments

An exception of type AttributeError occurred. Arguments:
("'NoneType' object has no attribute 'group'",)

I am testing out some alternatives to Investoscope but nothing is as good yet :-(

[Kusine]

@charlietomo thank you for your steps, they were helpful. Unfortunately I still get an error message (see below) after following your steps: "no such file or directory exists". I also get a similar /private/var/folders/... error message like the one you mentioned.

Like you I have looked around for alternative applications but have not yet found anything as good as Investoscope. I have kind of given up... 😢 I was hopeful when I stumbled on this updater but it does not seem to work.

[charlietomo]

Sorry the instructions didn't result in success. It looks like it may "just" be a Python or permissions issue. What OS are you running?
I found the online tool Sharesight, which has some nice features but also some missing features for me, and comes with a reasonable annual licensing cost.

[Kusine]

Hi @charlietomo I am running 10.15.7.
Thanks for pointing out Sharesight. It looks nice (unlike many of the PC port solutions out there). It does seem rather expensive for an application missing features. I also dislike subscription models. However, I shall take a look.
For now I am using Investoscope just to login transactions and have the reports. I do miss the updating of stock prices.

[charlietomo]

Hmm, 10.15.7 is the same as me so it isn't a Big Sur issue.
I also dislike subscription models but that is the way things are moving. There are some good features, including sharing with others and weekly email reports showing portfolio performance. I have not found a good way to move long term historical records from Investoscope > Sharesight.

[Kusine]

Hi @charlietomo - noted regarding Sharesight, I will explore more closely. Thanks again!

[KhaineBOT]

You need to install python3 from home-brew or macports, or from the python website. MacOS only comes with python2. This is why you are running into errors

[charlietomo]

You need to install python3 from home-brew or macports, or from the python website. MacOS only comes with python2. This is why you are running into errors

Interesting, and apologies I missed this step out. It appears I already have both python@3.8 and python@3.9 as installed via brew and shown from brew list. They must have been dependencies from something else.

[KhaineBOT]

Did changing the reference to python3 to the brew installed version (typically at /usr/local/bin/python3) solve your problem?

[Kusine]

Hi @KhaineBOT thank you for your suggestion. I already had Python 3.8 and 3.9 installed on my Mac via Homebrew. When I list the contents of /usr/local/bin/I see the following:

Can you help guide me on how ensure that the reference to python3 points indeed to the brew installed version? Is it via the .bash_profile? Thank you.

[Kusine]

Interesting, and apologies I missed this step out. It appears I already have both python@3.8 and python@3.9 as installed via brew and shown from brew list.

Hi @charlietomo - me too, when I brew list I see both python@3.8 and python@3.9.

[KhaineBOT]

In the script file you should make sure the line is the following:

PYTHON="/usr/local/bin/python3"

[Kusine]

Hi @KhaineBOT in Investoscope Updater > Show Package Contents > Contents > Resources > Script I have changed the 3rd line to: PYTHON="/usr/local/bin/python3"

I get the following message:

[KhaineBOT]

What is the output of:

which python3

I get /usr/local/bin/python3 on my system where I have installed python3 using brew. You will need to find where your instance of python3 is installed and use that, or look into why brew didn't install python correctly

[Kusine]

Hello @KhaineBOT the output of which python3 is:
/usr/local/bin/python3

When I simply type python3, I get the following output:
Python 3.9.2 (default, Feb 24 2021, 13:30:36) [Clang 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.29)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

It seems like python3 was properly installed by brew? Thank you for your help with this.

[KhaineBOT]

Your screenshot shows that the path you have entered is usr/local/bin/python3. It should be /usr/local/bin/python3