GerbilSoft/rom-properties v1.4

v1.4 - The Metadata and Xbox release

on GitHub

rom-properties 1.4

It's been a bit over a year since the previous release, and lots of changes have accumulated for this release. See NEWS.md for the full changelog, including the list of bugs fixed.

Major changes:

• New UI frontends: XFCE (GTK+ 3.x), MATE
• Transparent gzip decompression support. Primarily used for VGM (VGZ).
• ROM images with "dangerous" permissions for Nintendo DS and 3DS now have an overlay icon on KDE. (The Windows implementation was disabled in this release due to unexplained crashes.)
• File metadata is now exported to the desktop environment. This includes e.g. dimensions for textures and duration for audio. Currently supported on KDE and Windows.
• New parsers:
  • Audio formats: ADX, BCSTM, BCWAV, BFSTM, BRSTM, BFSTM, GBS, NSF, PSF (and related), SAP, SID, SNDH, SPC, VGM (and VGZ)
  • Wii: WADs, encrypted Wii save files
  • Mach-O binaries (Mac executables)
  • Neo Geo Pocket (Color) ROM images
  • Xbox: XBE, XEX, disc images, XPR textures, STFS packages
  • iQue Player content metadata and ticket files
• New parser features:
  • DMG: GBX footer
  • DirectDrawSurface: BC7 texture compression
  • GameCube: NASOS image format, CHN and TWN region codes, standalone Wii partitions
  • NES: Internal footer present in some ROMs.
  • NintendoDS: "Access Control" is now shown for DSi-enhanced ROMs. DSi flags are shown for NDS ROMs released after the DSi.
  • SegaPVR: Support for SVR files used on the Sony PlayStation 2.
• Other changes:
  • Removed S2TC decoding. The first version of rom-properties with support for S3TC, v1.2, was released after the S3TC patents expired. Since the patents expired, S3TC can be unconditionally enabled, and we don't need the S2TC decoder or test images anymore.
  • The Linux UI frontends will no longer initialize if running as root. rpcli will still run as root for now, though it's not recommended.
  • The XDG MIME database rom-properties.xml is now installed on Linux systems. This provides MIME types for formats not currently present in FreeDesktop.org's shared-mime-info database.

The Ubuntu packages have been moved from GitHub downloads to an Ubuntu Personal Package Archive. Builds are now available for Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial" Xerus, Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic" Beaver, and Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco" Dingo.

To add the PPA and install rom-properties, run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gerbilsoft/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rom-properties-all

This will install all rom-properties frontends and executables. Individual frontends can be installed by installing the relevant rom-properties-* package.

UPDATE: The Windows package had an incorrect setup for tinyxml2.dll due to a bug in the packaging script. Specifically, the 32-bit version was located in bin/, and the 64-bit version wasn't included. The PKG1 ZIP has both DLLs in the correct location. The packaging script will be fixed for the next release. (TinyXML2 is currently only used for parsing the manifest section in Windows executables. If the DLL isn't present, the section won't be parsed.)