Right way to keep source between releases

General Development
#1

Hi all!

I’m using retroarch/libretro under debian linux 10. I can successfully build them from source following official docs (https://docs.libretro.com/development/retroarch/compilation/linux-and-bsd/) and it works great. But I’m not sure what is the best procedure to rebuild a newer retroarch release, lets say, 6 months later.

Should I remove libretro-super directory and restart afresh following the documentation linked above? (re downloading everything each release)

Is it possible to keep the source and download only changes when a new version is released? How can I do that?

Thank you and regards.

#2

You don’t need libretro-super. You should be able to just build the sources from the RetroArch git repo directly:

git clone --depth=1 'https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch.git'
cd RetroArch
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make -j`nproc`
make install

You might want to replace /usr/local with another directory though, for example if you want to install into your home directory, you can use something like $HOME/opt/retroarch instead.

You also might want to pass --disable-qt to build without the Qt-based UI. Use ./configure --help to see available build options.

However, you need the needed -dev package dependencies installed with apt-get.

#3

Thank you, @RealNC, but this only build Retroarch, the GUI, not the cores.

I want to know the best way to build retroarch AND all libretro cores without to download everything every update, keeping the source and downloading only modified files between compilations.

Regards.