libretro / libretro/RetroArch

[Suggestion] Reduce amount of extracted files

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file optimization followup: enhancement
Dominant language
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Description

There's thousand of files when we extract retroarch, which can be a pain when copying the folder elsewhere or even during the extraction.

It'd be great if files could be packed in .zip files according to categories.

Example of big folders that could be zipped :

Shaders.zip (around 4000 files)
Cheats per hardware (Nintendo - Nintendo DS.zip, containing all .cht inside)
Assets folder, with each driver, like xmb.zip.
Overlays, thumbnails... Anyway, any folder with a huge amount of files.

Files would be extracted inside retroarch each time it's needed. I can't estimate the feasibilty of such thing, but having so much much files can be really annoying.

Retroarch 1.9.0 Windows x64

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First steps

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Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Start by tracing RetroArch's resource extraction and loading paths on Windows, then determine how shaders, cheats, assets, overlays, and thumbnails are currently handled. Done would require a defined packaging and on-demand extraction approach for large resource folders.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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