rhdndat 1.6.6

A www.romhacking.net dat creator and update checker.

rhdndat finds triples (rom file, softpatch file, version file) on the same directory, uses version to check for romhacking.net updates, and creates a clrmamepro entry on stdout or file for the result of each softpatch.

A softpatch filename is:

rom filename - rom extension + patch extension or

rom filename - rom extension + .reset.xdelta

This last is a special case to recognize hardpatched roms with revert patches.

version file is simply named version and has a version number line followed by a romhacking.net url line, repeated. These correspond to each hack or translation.

If there is no patch file, but a version file exists, the extension matches, and -d is used and does not recognize the rom, the file will be assumed to be hardpatched, which can be avoided by passing -i.

During normal operation, for all roms rhdndat stores extended attributes user.rom.md5, user.rom.crc32 and user.rom.sha1 in the rom file, and these checksums refer to the ‘patched’ file, even if the patch is a softpatch.

This makes rhdndat faster by only checksumming again after version file modification or after using the -x option.

The intended workflow is:

rhdnet dir romtype -t

check if there are any updates, then update the patches and version files here

then one of two options:

rhdnet dir romtype -s

if you want to update the extended attributes of changed version files dirs only

rhdnet dir romtype -o hackdat -d nointroxml

if you want to create or update a retroarch hack dat and take the original names from a nointro xml (used for translations only)

Requires flips (if trying to work with ips, bps) and xdelta3 (if trying to work with xdelta) on path or the same directory, unless on a Windows OS.

On windows, rhdndat only checks versions, has no optional arguments and flips/xdelta are not required.

Arguments:

rhdndat [-h] [-o output-file] [-d xml-file] [-i] [-x] [-s] [-t] search-path rom-type

positional arguments:

-search-path

directory tree to search for (rom, patches and version) files

-rom-type

extension (without dot) of roms to find patches for

optional arguments:

-h, --help

show this help message and exit

-o output-file

if omitted writes to stdout, if not empty merge entries, to override a entry, a new entry must list the same romhacking urls as the older entry

-d xml-file

normally the name is from the romhacking.net hack page, but this option picks up the game names from from this clrmamepro .xml and the rom checksum (including if a revert patch is available)

this allows adding unknown roms without a patch, which can’t normally be added for safety, albeit with the romhacking page name (the dat blacklists the false unknowns, such as music tracks in cd games)

it’s your responsibility to use a dat that matches the game/set you’re scanning to avoid false unknowns

-i

don’t allow roms with unknown original name to be added even if the patches have a romhacking.net hack page, requires -d

-x

recalculate the extended attributes of all rom files even if the version file is unchanged, useful for silent updates, the easy way to redo the checksums of files without version files

-s

do not progress beyond setting the extended attributes, exclusive option, except for -x

-t

only test version numbers against remote version, works without a patch present, exclusive option

Memory Requirements

This tool uses named FIFO files to calculate checksums when it has to patch, so not much memory is consumed. However, for patches of large roms like isos, you should make sure you’re using xdelta instead of bps, because flips tries to read the whole file into memory to create or apply a patch.

Install

rhdndat requires python 3.5 or later.

The source for this project is available here.

The project can be installed on recent linux machines with pip3 by installing rhdndat from [PyPI] or installing latest master from [github] but you’ll have to provide your own flips and xdelta executables in path (or current dir) for the ips, bps and xdelta support. That depends on your distribution but you can get and build them on the sites at the end of the document.

[PyPI]

pip3 install --user rhdndat

[github]

pip3 install --user https://github.com/i30817/rhdndat/archive/master.zip

rhdndat may fail to execute if your OS doesn’t add the pip3 install dir ~/.local/bin - in linux - to the path

Credits

Alcaro for helpful comments and for flips	https://github.com/Alcaro/Flips
xdelta for being fast and useful	http://xdelta.org/
romhacking.net for being a awesome resource	http://www.romhacking.net/