Switch to a new fork of XBoxDRV in order to get new features such as chatpad support
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I've been controlling my RetroPie on Raspberry PI 3 with XBox 360 Wireless controllers connected to the PI with an Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows device. I want to be able to type stuff from the couch when necessary so I ordered an XBox 360 Chatpad which arrived today. Sadly, it doesn't work. So I started to research why not.
I believe the driver being used by RetroPie is xboxdrv (please correct me if I'm wrong) and it has not had active development since 2015 despite a number of pull requests to fix or enhance various things. There is a pull request specifically to add chatpad support here only it looks unlikely that the original developers will accept any new PRs since they haven't done anything with the project for 2 years.
Would the thing to do here be to fork xboxdrv to incorporate the new changes and then replace xboxdrv with the fork in RetroPie? Or how else would we get chatpad support into RetroPie?
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@BenMcLean retropie uses this fork currently - https://github.com/zerojay/xboxdrv - you could submit it there. If zerojay doesn't accept it, I could consider forking it ourselves. thanks.
To help us help you - please make sure you read the sticky topics before posting - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first
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How long should we wait on my PR being reviewed / accepted before trying something else? (moving RetroPie to another fork?)
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Oh, and by the way, retweet this at Microsoft. It's completely ridiculous that they demand driver signing and then don't provide proper drivers for their own devices on their own OS.
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This'll be brilliant once added. Thanks for submitting the PR, hopefully Zerojay will accept it soon, if he's still around :)
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@BenMcLean Is there a way I can manually do this after a clean install of Retropie?
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@robertybob said in Switch to a new fork of XBoxDRV in order to get new features such as chatpad support:
@BenMcLean Is there a way I can manually do this after a clean install of Retropie?
Sorry, I'd be asking the same question. Anyone know?
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No one knows how to manually add this updated driver for testing purposes?
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@BuZz it's been a month with no progress on this. Could you maybe provide some help on getting me set up to at least test this?
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@BenMcLean
I would go and check how people install different EmulationStation branches and then make those changes, as it shouldn't be overly complicated to adjust where it is pulling the Xboxdrv from, seeing as if you're building from source it's pulling things from GitHub constantly.If GitHub is the issue I would look up how to start your own branch and use the Xboxdrv branch that @BuZz uses already and submit the fix yourself, then post a thread here for people to test it.
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@Syhles said in Switch to a new fork of XBoxDRV in order to get new features such as chatpad support:
@BenMcLean
I would go and check how people install different EmulationStation branches and then make those changes, as it shouldn't be overly complicated to adjust where it is pulling the Xboxdrv from, seeing as if you're building from source it's pulling things from GitHub constantly.If GitHub is the issue I would look up how to start your own branch and use the Xboxdrv branch that @BuZz uses already and submit the fix yourself, then post a thread here for people to test it.
If you read the thread above, you'd see I already did make my own branch (later edit: made my own pull request. didn't actually make a fork) which has the fix and was asking about how to test it.
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@BenMcLean
Just throwing this out here but you never actually stated you had your own branch, you showed that you submitted a pull request, asked about whether you should start your branch to expedite things along, asked us to retweet Microsoft, and asked how you go about testing a modified version of the driver.It may help if you post a link to your branch, you're more likely to get some help with setting it up and testing.
I am looking forward to this being a part of Retropie.
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@Syhles said in Switch to a new fork of XBoxDRV in order to get new features such as chatpad support:
@BenMcLean
Just throwing this out here but you never actually stated you had your own branch, you showed that you submitted a pull request, asked about whether you should start your branch to expedite things along, asked us to retweet Microsoft, and asked how you go about testing a modified version of the driver.It may help if you post a link to your branch, you're more likely to get some help with setting it up and testing.
I am looking forward to this being a part of Retropie.
Oh, oops, I guess I didn't actually click "Fork" but the point is the fix to test is right here in stepheny's fork.
My pull request simply asks to merge in stepheny's stable branch.
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So the question is how I can configure RetroPie to test this?
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@BenMcLean
I know you can download and install things via the command line from GitHub on Linux, I would suggest googling the command line commands for this.Not guaranteed that this will work though, just a suggestion.
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@Syhles said in Switch to a new fork of XBoxDRV in order to get new features such as chatpad support:
@BenMcLean
I know you can download and install things via the command line from GitHub on Linux, I would suggest googling the command line commands for this.Not guaranteed that this will work though, just a suggestion.
We all have Google, but linux driver configuration is kind of an advanced topic and I don't want to permanently screw up my retropie install by following outdated information which an inexperienced person has absolutely no way to avoid if they're just going from Googling this without talking to someone who knows what they're doing on it.
Maybe I should get a second memory stick just for testing.
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@BenMcLean swap it out for your branch here:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/supplementary/xboxdrv.sh#L30
And go to town.
I have a separate sd card I use solely for testing that I reimage at least once a week. If you don't have an extra make backups but they are cheap, so I'd recommend having an extra if your worried about borking stuff.
If you read the documentation it will answer 99% of your questions: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/
Also if you want a solution to your problems read this first: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first
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@herb_fargus said in Switch to a new fork of XBoxDRV in order to get new features such as chatpad support:
@BenMcLean swap it out for your branch here:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/supplementary/xboxdrv.sh#L30
And go to town.
I have a separate sd card I use solely for testing that I reimage at least once a week. If you don't have an extra make backups but they are cheap, so I'd recommend having an extra if your worried about borking stuff.
Thank you so much. I think this is the info I needed. I will scrounge around for an SD card for testing.
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OK I installed to a new sd card and installed stepheny's stable branch of xboxdrv from source by changing this line to refer to https://github.com/stepheny/xboxdrv.git and I saw it succeed in getting that version when I chose "install from source" from the menu in retropie setup.
Unfortunately, I haven't observed any change in behavior after I reboot and plug in the chatpad. I'm not sure if this means the changes to the driver are ineffective or if EmulationStation isn't prepared to take advantage of them or if EmulationStation is even using that xboxdrv driver. How would I test / check to narrow down these possibilities?
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