[zachmorris]

I've just been reading up on binary addons, and thought I'd throw a general question out there:
Any possibility of including additional binary addons for tools that are used for emulators / ROMs?

The items I'm thinking of currently:
7zip / rar / other compressed file formats. Lots of game files are archived. Some formats Kodi already supports, some aren't. Some emulators support it, some don't. It would be helpful for addon developers if there were binary addon(s) we could utilize. I believe LibreElec I believe already has an addon for p7zip.

MAME tools, various tools used for doing things to MAME roms. Specifically, CHDMAN is the one I've used in the past.

I'm sure there are others people use that I'm not thinking of, but off the top of my head those are the two that come to mind.

[garbear]

7zip / rar / other compressed file formats.

Work on this is underway! The solution is VFS binary add-ons. The VFS is a powerful abstraction because anything that can be modeled as file access can be implemented. This includes reading from compressed archives, in-memory patching, floppy disk manipulation, merging files, etc.

Here's the current state of VFS add-ons:

• PR8966 - waiting for Kodi's feature freeze to end
  
• VFS add-ons - waiting for PR8966
  
• libretro VFS interface - waiting for me to get off my ass and finish it
  
• VFS support in libretro cores - waiting for libretro VFS interface
  

Once the above pieces are in place, we'll have end-to-end VFS support, directly from core to vfs add-on.

I'm sure there are others people use that I'm not thinking of, but off the top of my head those are the two that come to mind.

If you think of any more, post them here and we'll use this as a brainstorming thread. What other sorts of VFS add-ons would be useful to libretro cores? Can you think of any tools that can't be implemented as VFS add-ons?

[zachmorris]

7zip / rar / other compressed file formats.

Work on this is underway! The solution is VFS binary add-ons. The VFS is a powerful abstraction because anything that can be modeled as file access can be implemented. This includes reading from compressed archives, in-memory patching, floppy disk manipulation, merging files, etc.

Here's the current state of VFS add-ons:

• PR8966 - waiting for Kodi's feature freeze to end
  
• VFS add-ons - waiting for PR8966
  
• libretro VFS interface - waiting for me to get off my ass and finish it
  
• VFS support in libretro cores - waiting for libretro VFS interface
  

Once the above pieces are in place, we'll have end-to-end VFS support, directly from core to vfs add-on.

I'm sure there are others people use that I'm not thinking of, but off the top of my head those are the two that come to mind.

If you think of any more, post them here and we'll use this as a brainstorming thread. What other sorts of VFS add-ons would be useful to libretro cores? Can you think of any tools that can't be implemented as VFS add-ons?

Thanks for this explanation. The libretro VFS interface was an interesting read. I think if a vfs.p7zip were implemented that would provide support for lots of game file packaging formats (according to the site it provides packing / unpacking for: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM and unpacking/reading for: AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z).

If I'm understanding this correctly, you could also potentially pass a plain HTML path to a core and it would be able to handle that as well? Treating a google drive or dropbox share as just another Kodi source sounds pretty awesome.

[coromi52]

Here is a neat article [removed]

[Dangelus]

Here is a neat article [removed]

I removed your link as the site contains links and articles promoting piracy add-ons and "fully loaded" hardware.