Gamelist XML Editor for Linux

thelostsoul

GUI operation or commandline automation to edit, filter and export gamelist.xml files from EmulationStation.

gamelistedit (short for Gamelist XML Editor) is a Python program written and tested under GNU+Linux. It is a graphical editor, but can do commandline operation without a gui too. Without gui the data itself cannot be edited, but filtered, sorted and converted to other formats.

Gamelist XML Editor allows for editing and filtering out data from gamelist.xml files. These files are databases used by EmulationStation in RetroPie to store game related meta information for each system, such as file paths or descriptions. Usually these files are created using scraper tools and manual editing should not be required. However there are times when it is needed, but editing such files in a text editor can be problematic. This program will only edit the database file itself without touching any associated files, such as ROMs or images. The user is responsible to sync up the files with all the changes made in the editor. It's a database editor, not a manager.

Read the requirements in the README to see which Python modules and versions are needed. You can also download the "-Linux-64Bit.tar.gz" named archive, which contains a compiled version without the requirements of Python or any library. But it comes as an almost 170 MB big package (60 MB download size), because it includes the entire environment.

EctoOne

I just found this and I was curious to try it but I'm failing to get it run.

I installed the packages python3-pyqt5 and python3-xmltodict. But when I try to run the file, it says:

libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
qt5ct: using qt5ct plugin
ERROR! At least Qt5 5.9 is required.

Your system does not meet the minimum requirements.
Program terminates.

My installed version of qt5-default is 5.11. So I'm kinda confused.

thelostsoul

Edit: Okay this thread says it is a usual Linux problem and is solved by symlinking files: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/61078/qt-applications-dont-work-due-to-libegl

@EctoOne Hi. Glad you found it interesting. I am no longer running RetroPie and stopped working on the program. But it should work fine itself. I have just downloaded and tested the .py source and it run on my qt5-base at version 5.15 (Manjaro PC).

A quick search on the web about the error message reveals that this issue seems to be related to Raspbian and even Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi. This post claims it would be a permission issue and shows how to fix it: https://github.com/tipam/pi3d/issues/177#issuecomment-1095097919 . I don't know how good of an advice this is. Here is another post who is on A Raspberry Pi and have the same issue: https://forum.qt.io/topic/76275/is-libegl-warning-dri2-failed-to-authenticate-error-significant-in-qtcreator

So at least we can rule out an issue with the program itself. You could try the permission fix, but do a backup off course.

EctoOne

@thelostsoul Thanks for the answer and I'm sorry that I didn't google the error myself and forgot to mention that I'm actually trying to run it on a Pi with a Raspberry Pi OS variant (TwisterOS). Since I'm already using Skraper on that Pi it would be nice to have an editor to make some changes.

But that reminds me, will the program work on a Pi4 when I just get the tarball or do I have to to build it first? Because I tried that and also got an error when I tried to install pyinstaller.

thelostsoul

@EctoOne Well the program was never intended to run on the Pi itself. Maybe I should have made it clear in the description. According to what the people say on the web about this problem is related to Raspberry Pi stuff. I think you would need to fix this problem first, which may or may not fixable in your situation.

If that is fixed, the program itself could probably work on the Pi4, but I don't know. It's just a Python script using Qt5, so that is basically it. You would not need to build anything from the perspective of the program itself. You do not need to install PyInstaller to run this program. "gamelistedit-0.1.0.tar.gz" is basically the Python source code with some cleaned up files. It's intended to just run. The other file "gamelistedit-0.1.0-Linux-64Bit.tar.gz" used PyInstaller to make it indipendent from the Python and Qt5 installation, as it bundles it together and extracts it in the background.

But... unfortunately this is sad day and that does not work for me anymore. Oh man... Computers! Sorry that the program don't just run, it's frustrating. Even for me, because I would love you to try the program out. If there is anything I can do to make it run for you, I would, but I don't know what.

EctoOne

@thelostsoul No worries. But yeah, I just looked at it and I don't have the libs in the /opt/vc/lib directory so I can't even link them. And I guess the ones in the arm-linux-gnueabihf directory are just not good enough. Well, I tried and I'm certainly not going to build qt5 from source since it appears to take like 40 hours.

Anyway, thanks again for the help.

thelostsoul

@EctoOne Oh, that's a real bummer. I thought the package with the "-Linux-64Bit.tar.gz" in the filename from the releases page, which is build with PyInstaller would solve issues like that in the future. I get a fontconfig error with it on my current system and it can be a local issue on my machine. Not very encouraging, but maybe you could try to run that.

But well, it contains binary files, so from security standpoint I can understand when you don't even want try that.