Sharing Recipes

Sharing recipes

A recipe you made can go into the community catalogue, so other players get a working setup. Sharing has three parts: a community check that proves the recipe works for someone else, the Submit window, which sends it as a pull request to nullfx/distiller-recipes, and optional reports.

Rules for shared recipes

• The game comes from its publisher. A shared recipe installs the game from the publisher's official, public installer (a download link, or the download page) and downloads nothing else of the game. Recipes that use your own copy of a game (a folder or file you chose) have those steps swapped for the official installer when shared.
• Only checked recipes are shared. Distiller submits a recipe only after a community check passed for its current content.
• Shared recipes are MIT-licensed. Screenshots and icons stay their publisher's, and are only used to identify the game.

The Submit window

Submit to Community… (in the workshop, or the game's menu) opens a checklist. Each step is marked done, needed, out of date (it was done, but the recipe changed since) or optional, and Submit is enabled once nothing is needed or out of date:

Step	What it checks
Details	The game's catalogue entry, for the first recipe of a game: Publisher, Developer, Release year, Website, genres and a description.
Installer	The official installer link or page, and This recipe only downloads the publisher's official installer. For installers that change with updates, which publisher's signature it's Verified by.
Community Check	A passing check for the recipe as it is now (below): Run Community Check…, or Run Again… after changes.
Pictures	Up to three screenshots from the check (choose the cover with Make Cover), and the game's icon.
Report	Optional: Include a report of how it ran on this Mac, with a rating (How did it run?), Average FPS and notes.
Review & Submit	Everything that will be sent, and Where it goes: your GitHub account, the repository and the pull request. Submit Recipe (or Submit Update for a recipe already submitted).

The community check

The check proves the recipe installs and runs from a clean start, as it would for another player:

1. Distiller makes a fresh test bottle, downloads the official installer (recording its checksum, or reading its publisher's signature), applies the recipe's settings, and starts the installer. Follow its steps.
2. A small panel floats above everything from then on. Some installers finish; others start a launcher or the game. Either way, choose The game's program from what's running in the test bottle, or start one that's installed.
3. Play until the game reaches its login screen or menu. Press ⌃⌥⌘S (or click Capture) whenever it shows something worth sharing, during the install too. Screenshots the game saves with its own key are collected as well. Capturing needs Screen Recording permission for Distiller: Open Privacy Settings takes you there (System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Screen & System Audio Recording).
4. Choose It Works or It Doesn't Work (or Cancel). Everything in the test bottle is stopped and the bottle is removed.

The program you chose becomes the recipe's program to launch, and the game's icon is read from it.

If a check is interrupted (for example, Distiller quit during it), the next launch offers to remove the leftover test bottle.

Signing in to GitHub

Submitting uses your GitHub account; browsing and installing never need one.

1. Sign In with GitHub (in the toolbar, the Submit window, or Settings ▸ GitHub).
2. Distiller shows a one-time code: Copy Code and Open GitHub, paste it on GitHub's page and approve Distiller.
3. Distiller shows Signed in to GitHub as ….

Distiller asks only for access to public repositories (public_repo), and keeps the sign-in token in your keychain. Sign Out removes it.

What happens when you submit

Distiller forks distiller-recipes to your account (maintainers get a branch in the repository itself), commits the recipe, the game's catalogue entry if it's the game's first recipe, your chosen screenshots and the game's icon, and the report if you included one, then opens a pull request. A maintainer reviews it; once merged, the recipe appears on the website and in everyone's Community tab. Submitting again while the pull request is open updates it.

Reports

A report says how a recipe ran on your Mac, rated Platinum to Borked (see ratings), with an optional frame rate and notes. Use Report How It Ran… on any game, including ones installed from the catalogue (see Your library). Reports include your Mac's chip, GPU cores, memory and macOS version, and nothing else about you.

On the command line

distiller github login
distiller recipe community-check <game>
distiller recipe submit <game> --tier gold --confirm

See Command-line reference.