Installation

Download

Each release provides one archive per platform:

Each archive holds:

• RomSieve (RomSieve.exe on Windows): the graphical interface;
• romsieve-cli (romsieve-cli.exe): the command line;
• README.md and LICENSE (GPLv3);
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt and the licenses folder: the copyright notices and licenses of the components that both programs embed (.NET, Avalonia, SkiaSharp, SharpCompress...). Third-Party Licenses, in the preferences window, opens this file;
• docs/: this user guide, in English and French, to read offline in a browser (open docs/index.html).

Both programs are self-contained: no .NET installation is required. Each one is a single file of about 75 to 100 MB.

Checking a download

Each archive comes with a .sha256 file. Put both in the same folder, then:

sha256sum -c RomSieve-1.2.0-linux-x64.tar.gz.sha256

On Windows, in PowerShell, compare the hash shown by Get-FileHash RomSieve-1.2.0-win-x64.zip with the content of the .sha256 file.

First launch

Windows

Extract the archive anywhere (for instance C:\Programs\RomSieve) and run RomSieve.exe.

The executables are not signed: on the first launch, Windows SmartScreen may display "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.

Linux

tar -xzf RomSieve-1.2.0-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd RomSieve-1.2.0-linux-x64
./RomSieve

The archive keeps the execute permission. If it was lost (copy through a Windows share, for instance), restore it with chmod +x RomSieve romsieve-cli.

Both programs use a few system libraries, which most Linux desktops already have:

• ICU (libicu) and OpenSSL (libssl), for both programs;
• for the interface only, X11 (libX11, libICE, libSM) and Fontconfig. Under Wayland, the interface goes through XWayland, which GNOME and KDE provide out of the box.

If one is missing, RomSieve does not start and names it in the terminal ("Couldn't find a valid ICU package", or "Unable to load shared library 'libSM.so.6'", for instance). To install them:

# Debian, Ubuntu (ICU and OpenSSL are always installed there)
sudo apt install libx11-6 libice6 libsm6 libfontconfig1
# Fedora
sudo dnf install libX11 libICE libSM fontconfig libicu openssl-libs
# Arch
sudo pacman -S libx11 libice libsm fontconfig icu openssl

Where RomSieve stores its files

• The settings are saved when you close RomSieve and before each real sort: the next launch restores your folders, filters and window layout.
• The journals record every file written by a real sort; they are what makes undo possible. RomSieve keeps those of the last 50 real sorts; older ones are deleted when a sort begins, and their sorts can no longer be undone.
• The logs of the runs keep every line of the log of each simulation, sort or undo started from the interface, whose panel only shows the last ones; the end of the run gives the path of its file. RomSieve keeps the last 20.
• The crash reports are only written after an unexpected error (see Troubleshooting). You can delete them at any time.
• The checksum cache remembers the CRC32 of each file (invalidated when the file changes), so that a second analysis of the same collection is much faster.
• The header cache remembers what the headers of archives (their files, with their size and CRC32) and of CHDs say, also invalidated when the file changes. An unchanged archive is not opened again, which matters most on a network share: there, reading the headers of a whole MAME collection takes minutes, and a second analysis is several times faster.

To start over with default settings, close RomSieve and delete config.json.

Updating

Replace the executables with those of the new archive. Your settings, profiles, journals and cache are kept: they are stored outside the program folder.

Building from source

See the Building from Source section of the README (.NET 10 SDK required).