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.