[redshepard]

Do not desperate. In Linux there is always a solution, no matter how easy (or difficult). I have been doing some research. LibreELEC runs Kodi in standalone mode using a systemd service named kodi. Also, LibreELEC applies a C++ patch to Kodi core to prevent setting Kodi into a window. This makes sense: Kodi is running in standalone mode without a window manager so turning it into a window will be detrimental.

OK, so your solution is to use a wrapper shell script that turns Kodi off before launching the application, launchs the app, and then turns Kodi ON again. This will have the advantage that Kodi will not run on the background so you will have more CPU time to run the emulator (this is especially important for emulators like Dolphin or Mupen). I have made this wrapper script example looking at the wrapper script from Gamesterter addon:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Wrapper script to run Retroarch in LibreELEC
#
RETROARCH_EXECUTABLE="/change/this/retroarch"
LIBRETRO_CORES_DIR="/change/this/libretro/"

# --- Stop KODI ---
echo "Stopping Kodi service ..."
systemctl stop kodi

# --- Run retroarch ---
echo "Running Retroarch ..."
$RETROARCH_EXECUTABLE -L $LIBRETRO_CORES_DIR/$1_libretro.so -f -v "$2"

# --- Start KODI ---
echo "Starting Kodi service ..."
systemctl start kodi

Save this code in a file named "run_retroarch.sh". Remember this wrapper script must have executable permissions (chmod 755 run_retroarch.sh). Then, to use it in AEL:

Code:

Application: '/directory/run_retroarch.sh'
Arguments: 'core_name "$rom$"'

core_name does not include _libretro.so. For example, picodrive_libretro.so becomes picodrive. If you want to launch applications other than Retroarch you will need to create wrapper scripts on the same fashion.

Good luck!

Wintermute, you are da man!!!!! One can never despair when there is such dedicated and knowledgable developers such as yourself.

This looks fantastic, I will look at trying this out some time over the weekend.

Thanks again for all your help with this, I shall report back with results either way.

Hi, i know im late here but im trying to get this working with my retropie setup. The command im using to start my retroarch/rom is retropie's runcommand.sh, that command needs a path to rom as an input.
What i was hopeing to figure out is weather or not AEL has a way to pass that onto runcommand like you passed the path to libretro into your script. Thanks for any help.