What are you update habits for RetroArch?

RetroArch General
#1

I ask because I’m skeptical that RetroArch’s lack of a real updater is a good idea. Many users have requested that RetroArch automatically check for updates for each of its components and inform the user when updates are available, and make it a one click operation to update everything needs updating. RetroArch developers have responded that this would increase bandwidth costs for them, which is an understandable concern.

This doesn’t make much sense to me. I download the full package and every installed core multiple times a week because the only way to know what truely needs updating is to check a hundred GitHub projects, and nobody is going to do that. (Buildbot recompiles things when it’s not necessary and doesn’t reflect the real date something was last changed, such as cores that have actually been stagnant for months or years) In my case, the lack of a real update system is actually wasting bandwidth, and I believe some other users are in the same position.

So, let’s have an informal poll here. How often do you update RetroArch, and which parts of it do you update?

#4

Daily. That way the bugs are caught sooner, and easier for the devs to fix.

#5

In Linux I only download and install cores that I use and that have been updated, and the info files, with a bash script (by keeping the zip files and using wget --timestamping). I suppose that bandwidth is the minimum necessary this way.

I also only get thumbnails for games in playlists (also a bash script) and back them up to dropbox for setting up or updating my devices.

#6

I use the the testing ppa for Ubuntu, thus it update automagically when it is updated, for those cores not on the ppa, I either use the buildbod (once a day, sometimes twice) or I build it myself.

#7

Windows 10 user here.

I update the main application whenever a new version is released, and only update to a nightly if a certain issue I’ve run into is fixed, or some other-thing is added that I become aware of (and need)

As for cores, I’ve been a big proponent of bringing up better ways to communicate updates, as GitHub may as well be written in Kanji characters for all I can make sense of hahaha.

That being said, recently there was, at least one and I’m told more, update(s) on libretro.com’s frontpage that detailed the updates made to various cores prior to the latest release of RetroArch. I found this to be invaluable, as a number of cores had been updated that I had no idea about.

#8

I normally do these using libretro-super repo at least once a day or when i havent checked for awhile:

-edit build-config.sh  to only include cores i need.(done once mostly)
-run libretro-fetch.sh
-run libretro-build.sh
-run libretro-install.sh <path_to_cores>
-run retroarch-build.sh
-cd retroarch > sudo make install
-done
#9

Could you please share those scripts?
I would like to add them to my maintenance bash script. At this point in time, it updates the distro and gnome extensions (from respective GitHub repositories) but am constantly looking for stuff to add in order to have a more up-to-date system using only bash maintenance.sh. Thanks!

#10

I used to update retroarch.exe (and debug.exe) every day with the nightlies, but now I do it once every week or two weeks. And I always keep several older versions in case something is broken in latest nightly. As for the content, I update everything maybe every 2-3 weeks.

#11

Only update cores unless if a bug in retroarch is found, in that case updated to retroarch nighty.

updated cores almost 1-2 times a week using stellar 0.8.6 beta to automatically update the cores i have without downloading all the cores