MiSTer Bootstrap Tool

[coughlanio]

So I spent most of my Sunday quickly writing up a tool to help bootstrap everything you need for your MiSTer's SD card.

The aim of the tool is to download the latest core binary for each available system, generate any associated folder structure, and also to download any additional data such as boot roms, disk images etc, putting them in the correct place.

You can find the tool here: https://github.com/coughlanio/mister-bootstrap

It's a Node.js based script, and I've only tested it on Node 8, and Ubuntu 17.10, but it may work on other platforms.

I'd really appreciate some feedback/PRs or suggestions for improvement!

[NegSol]

I think it is a great idea. I would use this tool when setting up a new card. While not yet having look at it in detail ye,t do you think it would make sense to have some sort of selection menu to select the cores (edit: ok - I see there is already a selection option in the .js file) and maybe even variants of core configurations (e.g. the different rom configurations for spectrum or C64 cores)? After all not every one wants to have everything on one card.

Also maybe a similar tool for the MiST would make sense, so maybe designing it for both platforms is something to think about.

I will give more feedback once I tested it.

[Newsdee]

Great idea! I did something similar for MiST eons ago: https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-bina ... rter_pack/
It's limited to the MiST repo though; this new approach seems to be able to grab multiple repositories, which is much better!

[coughlanio]

I think it is a great idea. I would use this tool when setting up a new card. While not yet having look at it in detail ye,t do you think it would make sense to have some sort of selection menu to select the cores (edit: ok - I see there is already a selection option in the .js file) and maybe even variants of core configurations (e.g. the different rom configurations for spectrum or C64 cores)? After all not every one wants to have everything on one card.

Also maybe a similar tool for the MiST would make sense, so maybe designing it for both platforms is something to think about.

I will give more feedback once I tested it.

You can specify the cores you want to fetch my passing a comma-separated list with the "--cores" flag, or select them via the interactive prompt when running the script naked.

It should theoretically work on the MiST with an updated manifest. I implemented it to be as flexible as possible.

I look forward to the feedback!

[coughlanio]

Great idea! I did something similar for MiST eons ago: https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-bina ... rter_pack/
It's limited to the MiST repo though; this new approach seems to be able to grab multiple repositories, which is much better!

Thanks! Yeah, I want it to be as flexible as possible, and not just limited to already having the files locally. Thankfully Sorgelig has a pretty convenient release naming pattern to make the manifest a bit easier to implement!

[coughlanio]

Just made quite a few fixes, and streamlining of the UI. I'm considering this pretty stable for now, but would be great if someone could try it out and give me some feedback.

I've tagged a 1.0.0 candidate here: https://github.com/coughlanio/mister-bo ... /1.0.0-rc1

EDIT: I also tried my hand at compiling the source to a native Linux binary, which I've attached to the above release. It's using nodec, so it's quite large, but removes the need to install Node.js separately. I will look at compiling native Windows binaries (and perhaps OSX) in the next day or two.

[coughlanio]

https://github.com/coughlanio/mister-bootstrap

Updates

• Updated manifest to include all current system cores

Upcoming

• Subfolder Support
• Cleaning up of obsolete versions
• Platform binaries
• Filtering by system type (console, computer, arcade)
• Optional GUI
• External drive selection process

[Sorgelig]

https://github.com/coughlanio/mister-bootstrap

Updates

• Updated manifest to include all current system cores

Upcoming

• Subfolder Support
• Cleaning up of obsolete versions
• Platform binaries
• Filtering by system type (console, computer, arcade)
• Optional GUI
• External drive selection process

I can give you access to MiSTer group where you can move the repository and add info to Wiki.

[coughlanio]

https://github.com/coughlanio/mister-bootstrap

Updates

• Updated manifest to include all current system cores

Upcoming

• Subfolder Support
• Cleaning up of obsolete versions
• Platform binaries
• Filtering by system type (console, computer, arcade)
• Optional GUI
• External drive selection process

I can give you access to MiSTer group where you can move the repository and add info to Wiki.

That sounds good, would be nice to have it all in the one place. I'll send you a PM now!