Question about upgrading and config overwrites

movisman

Hi,

I just have a quick question regarding updating in full from a binary based installation.

I recently started my Retropie instance from scratch on 3.6 (as I was on old 3.0 before and a fresh image was always better than upgrading because of Jessie). Everything is running as I like, and so far, when upgrading anything, I update the script, and then I update/install the components I wish to update based on the changes made and if I need/want them.

However if I wish to do a full upgrade to say, 3.7 based on the binary installation, will it overwrite any files which I am likely to have edited? For example es_systems.cfg, emulators.cfg, runcommand.cfg, etc, etc, or anything else eg. core options, changes to shaders, etc? I know the retroarch configs don't overwrite and a new one is written as retroarch.cfg.rp-dist, keeping your old one intact with a new skeleton one. But just wondering how other files are treated. If say, a config file gets a series of updates to add functionality, I assume this will overwrite your old one, meaning you lose any edits you made. I guess I would then need to merge my changes back into the new config file.

It doesn't matter if something did go wrong, because I have full .img backups of the SD as well as offline WIP versions of any files which I edited from the default. But I have always been curious about how it works (full update installation over the top) vs. doing every component individually as required.

Sorry if this is a silly question. I have read the wiki of course, but I am not quite clear how the script treats existing files. Can someone help me clear this up?

Thanks!

BuZz

/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg will be changed - you can copy that to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg to manage it yourself

Generally configs are not overwritten. There may be a case or two we have missed though.

movisman

@BuZz

Thanks BuZz.
No probs with es_systems.cfg, I have only made basic edits to remove .iso and .bin for PSX from there so that's a 2 minute job if it's overwritten. Or I can just copy it as you suggest.

So in theory, nothing in opt\retropie\configs\all would be touched. I assume the only time anything would be overwritten in here is if the workings of a particular config file changed dramatically? (unlikely I guess)

What about changes to default shaders or changes to theme related files? Would these only be overwritten if there is an update to the shader or theme in question?

I guess any changes in \etc\init.d and \etc are liable to be overwritten. I have only a couple of edits here though which are very simple.

Thanks!

BuZz

you can control extensions by copying platforms.cfg from ~/RetroPie-Setup to /opt/retropie/configs/all and then that will be used when updating es_systems.cfg - but you would need to keep it up to date manually then.

Nothing should be overwritten in that folder correct.

movisman

@BuZz

Hi BuZz,

Thanks very much for your help. I will do a full binary install and I soon will be able to tell what's been overwritten pretty quickly, if anything. Will let you know if anything unexpected happens.

Cheers!

movisman

@BuZz

I just did a full update, if interested here are my initial findings:

es_systems.cfg overwritten as expected (as explained above)
crt-pi shader (which i had updated) was overwritten with the older version (even though it was updated yesterday?)

Both files created a .old copy but the copy does not appear to be the pre-upgrade file, it is just a copy of the new file? They appear to match.

All of the emulator specific emulator.cfg files in /opt/retropie/configs/insertsystemhere were overwritten with a new copy, meaning my default emulator changed back to default on any system which I had selected a preferred emulator for, eg. Master System, Megadrive, Nintendo, Sega CD. Any idea why this might be?

Apart from that, so far I cannot see anything else from the upgrade which has caused issues. The above literally took me 15 minutes to sort.

Cheers

BuZz

Yes, the default per system emulator will be overwritten currently, so I should change that. Thanks.

the crt-pi shader won't be updated until a new retroarch is packaged, but actually, that could be improved as the shaders / overlays could be installed at the configure stage instead. I'll probably change that too.

movisman

@BuZz

Thanks for clarifying this, understood about the shader thing, I didn't realise it currently worked this way. I was going to ask if you wanted me to raise an issue in Github for those two items but I see you have already done it, thanks :)

The only other thing, which I mention above, is when my crt-pi.glsl and es_systems.cfg were overwritten, I was expecting the .old copies which were made to be my old file. But when I checked the content it looked like the file was just a copy of the new one. I might have been going mental, and maybe I need to test this again to be sure. But i'm pretty certain that was the case.

Cheers

BuZz

Not sure where the old copies came from, as right now this area gets overwritten - it's not set to rename anything to .old - you sure you didn't create them when changing ? If you rename your custom version it should avoid it being overwritten.

movisman

@BuZz

Ha, now you are making me seriously doubt myself. I swear the .old files had a modified date of when the update took place. If I was imagining this (which it sounds like I was if the code is not set to do this), there is a chance I would have kept a remote copy due to previous tweaks to both files.

I'll just make a mental note to see what happens when I next upgrade, the .old files have been removed now.

Thanks again.