Export to MiSTer re-copies roms each time, even if they already exist

[matijaerceg]

I added a game to the plan and exported to mister.

Then I added another game to the same plan, and exported to mister again, which caused ammister to re-copy all the rom files to the MiSTer.

Seems like a bug, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

[matijaerceg]

Let me know if a screenshare of my machine would help, I can hop on zoom/discord/whatever

[city41]

This is because it can't know if the rom was updated or not. #72 is one way to address that.

Once I figure out a reliable way to determine if the rom has changed or not, I'll change this.

[matijaerceg]

Slightly confused: after reading https://github.com/city41/AMMiSTer/wiki/Space-vs-Speed-Exporting-Optimizations I thought the whole point of speed mode is that after the first sync, it only copies MRAs, but I have mine set to Speed and it's copying rbfs each time

Is the speed setting only omitting rom copies? Not core?

EDIT: actually, I see it's copying zips as well:

[city41]

The rbfs copying each time looks to be windows specific, captured at #87

[matijaerceg]

[city41]

I was wrong about this. I forgot how exports work a bit.

Exports will re-copy mra files every time. They are likely to have changed after an update and are small, so I think this is a good approach.

Core files (rbf files) will only copy over if there is a newer one available using the date in its file name. This no longer applies to Jotego cores which no longer have the date. If a core doesn't have a date, it is copied over every time in an export. I think now that Jotego is doing this, other core authors might follow.

Roms are not copied over if they already exist on the mister. This is probably a little risky, and should be fixed better. But for now, I think this is ok. Roms are unlikely to change much. They were copying on Windows due to the path separator problems that should now be fixed.

[matijaerceg]

Thinking out loud, what if you left some sort of breadcrumb on the MiSTer as to when the last ammister export was, and then ammister can use the date of the latest catalog sync to determine what needs to be copied, both in terms of roms and cores?

[city41]

That's not a bad idea. Another bonus is it's fast. My idea of inspecting the file's modify time would be a lot slower (assuming modify times can be trusted, I have my doubts).

[matijaerceg]

And then you could give an option to the user on export as to whether to only copy things newer than the breadcrumb, or whether to copy everything (perhaps as a way to troubleshoot or do a 'fresh start')

[city41]

This should be fixed w 0.25.7