miniretro

This is a small (Linux only for now) CLI libretro frontend.

The aim is to allow for automated testing of libretro cores in a simpler way (vs using the full fledged Retroarch frontend). Also it can serve as an example on how to implement a libretro Frontend that's simple enough for beginners to read and understand.

It should run on any POSIX compatible system (presumably) but might only work for cores that do not use hardware acceleration.

Building

Just do a "make" and you are good. If you want to cross-build the tool use something like "make CXX=arm-linux-g++". You will need to build the cores separately (or perhaps download them from libretro's build bot at https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/).

It is possible to run a statically built core too (that is, core.a sort of file) by compiling it with miniretro. To do that you will need to add the -DSTATIC_CORE flag to CXXFLAGS and the .a file to the LDFLAGS. You will get a binary that ships the core.

To build miniretro for other architectures you will need a cross-toolchain and then do something like:

  make CXX=/path/toolchains/bin/arm-linux-g++

Running

Some example commandline:

./miniretro -c somecore.so -r  somegame.bin -f 3600 --dump-frames-every 60

This runs a ROM using a the given core for 3600 frames (that's 1 minute if the core runs at 60 fps) and dumps an image every 60 frames (every second).

Regression testing

This was built with the intent to automatically test cores against a testing suite. There's a python script provided for that purpose already, here some examples on how can one use it for testing:

Run a bunch of ROMs for 5 minutes, in a parallel fashion:

  ./regression.py --core /path/mycore.so --system /path/systemdir \
  --input /path/dir-full-with-roms/ --output report.html  --threads=10 \
  --frames=18000

Run an ARM built core using qemu, like above. For this to work you will need to build miniretro for ARM too, and have a toolchain that provides some minimal sysroot (where libc and the dynamic linker as well as other dependencies live).

  ./regression.py --core /path/mycore.so --system /path/systemdir \
  --input /path/dir-full-with-roms/ --output report.html  --threads=10 \
  --frames=18000 --driver "qemu-arm -L /path/to/sysroot/ ./miniretro.arm.bin

The tool report.py can help you generate an HTML report, and comparison reports (this is still pretty barebones!)