Assets Repository and Mechanism

[MirisWisdom]

Many moons ago, HXE was going to have a little package manager feature built into it. At the moment, it's got a rudimentary update mechanism.

These two concepts can be combined into one asset management system, and this issue will serve as a public thread for discussing the whole thing.

[MirisWisdom]

Draft for the data structure of a repository object:

XML representation of a sample repository object state:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Repository xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Title>The SPV3 Updates Repository</Title>
  <Path>https://domain.tld/updates.xml</Path>
  <Type>XML</Type>
  <Assets>
    <RepositoryAsset>
      <Name>spv3.exe</Name>
      <Path>.</Path>
      <Versions>
        <AssetVersion>
          <ID>1</ID>
          <CRC>10248192</CRC>
          <Downloads>
            <VersionDownload>
              <URL>https://domain.tld/version_01/spv3.exe</URL>
              <CRC>10248192</CRC>
              <Type>Binary</Type>
            </VersionDownload>
            <VersionDownload>
              <URL>https://mirror.tld/spv3.v01.zip</URL>
              <CRC>40962048</CRC>
              <Type>ZIP</Type>
            </VersionDownload>
          </Downloads>
          <Patches />
        </AssetVersion>
        <AssetVersion>
          <ID>2</ID>
          <CRC>16384543</CRC>
          <Downloads />
          <Patches>
            <VersionPatch>
              <URL>https://domain.tld/spv3.v02.patch</URL>
              <CRC>1287343</CRC>
              <Original>1024819</Original>
              <Type>Binary</Type>
            </VersionPatch>
            <VersionPatch>
              <URL>https://mirror.tld/spv3.v02.patch.zip</URL>
              <CRC>1287343</CRC>
              <Original>1024819</Original>
              <Type>ZIP</Type>
            </VersionPatch>
          </Patches>
        </AssetVersion>
      </Versions>
    </RepositoryAsset>
    <RepositoryAsset>
      <Name>a10.map</Name>
      <Path>maps</Path>
      <Versions>
        <AssetVersion>
          <ID>1</ID>
          <CRC>74631950</CRC>
          <Downloads>
            <VersionDownload>
              <URL>https://domain.tld/maps/a10v1.7z</URL>
              <CRC>23749889</CRC>
              <Type>LZMA</Type>
            </VersionDownload>
            <VersionDownload>
              <URL>https://mirror.tld/spv3/downloads/maps/a10v1.lzma</URL>
              <CRC>84277634</CRC>
              <Type>LZMA</Type>
            </VersionDownload>
          </Downloads>
          <Patches />
        </AssetVersion>
        <AssetVersion>
          <ID>2</ID>
          <CRC>51673276</CRC>
          <Downloads />
          <Patches>
            <VersionPatch>
              <URL>https://domain.tld/spv3.a10v2.patch</URL>
              <CRC>43839584</CRC>
              <Original>12895894</Original>
              <Type>Binary</Type>
            </VersionPatch>
            <VersionPatch>
              <URL>https://mirror.tld/spv3/patches/a10/v02.patch.zip</URL>
              <CRC>78938447</CRC>
              <Original>43839584</Original>
              <Type>ZIP</Type>
            </VersionPatch>
          </Patches>
        </AssetVersion>
      </Versions>
    </RepositoryAsset>
  </Assets>
</Repository>

[MirisWisdom]

Simplified the data structure a little, with an emphasis on convention over configuration:

{
  "Repositories": [
    {
      "Title": "The HCE Repository",
      "Path": "https://hce.tld/repository.json",
      "Description": "The Official SPV3 Updates Repository",
      "Assets": [
        {
          "Name": "ui.map",
          "Path": "maps",
          "Versions": [
            {
              "Hash": 1034723826,
              "Parent": 2856549778,
              "Downloads": [
                {
                  "URL": "https://hce.tld/downloads/ui.map",
                  "Hash": 1386814934
                }
              ],
              "Patches": [
                {
                  "URL": "https://hce.tld/downloads/ui.map-0x1024.diff",
                  "Hash": 1890108194
                }
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "Title": "The SPV3 Repository",
      "Path": "https://spv3.tld/repository.json",
      "Description": "The Official SPV3 Updates Repository",
      "Assets": []
    }
  ]
}

[BinToss]

My gut tells me it would be better to keep the executable and library asset metadata separate from the game asset metadata.

My (scant) experience with NuGet and other package managers makes me believe it would be best to have each game asset's metadata be in separate files so they could be fetched individually (or by group of related files or file structure).

Chimera's install path and file name(s) have changed a few times over the years. If we are able to update to the latest Chimera release, then migrating the user's SPV3 setup from and older Chimera to the latest Chimera might be...better done as a (cross-platform?) script distributed with the package rather than hardcoded. Older chimera paths include the following:

version	shipped w/ SPV3	path(s)
0.40-202	[x]	./controls/chimera.dll; ./mods/*.dll via Monolith Mod Loader 0.3.0
0.50-581	[ ]	./controls/*.dll; ./mods/*.dll via MML 0.3.0
1.0.0_2019-04-06	[ ]	./chimera.dll via MML 1.0.5 [FileVersion 1.0.0.5] (./strings.dll)
1.0.0*	[ ]	./strings.dll; MML built in

If Linux compatibility is successful, then a cross-platform script (or a custom old-data/new-data convention) may be necessary.