Confirmed live on a real install: after the previous commit, ES-DE found
zero games on every system. Root-caused by walking GOW's own
apps/es-de/build/scripts/startup.sh line by line: GOW's image bakes a
FULL es_settings.xml template (100+ settings, including
ROMDirectory=/ROMs, confirmed against the real template file in the
games-on-whales/gow repo) and its own startup script copies that
template into place exactly once, the very first time the container
starts, gated on the settings file not already existing.
The previous fix pre-created a minimal stub file (containing only
RunInBackground) before the container had ever started - GOW's startup
script saw that file "already there", skipped writing its own template
entirely, and ES-DE fell back to vanilla upstream defaults for
everything else in that file, including ROMDirectory, which is not
/ROMs by default. Every system's games vanished as a result.
Also corrects an earlier wrong claim in both the code comment and
README: ES-DE's own *compiled* default for RunInBackground is false, but
GOW's own template deliberately sets it to true - that's the real,
confirmed source of the original background-launch bug, not an
accidental toggle as previously assumed.
Fix: only ever patch an es_settings.xml that already exists with real
content (`[ -s "$_ESDE_SETTINGS" ]`) - never create one. On a genuinely
fresh install, before EmulationStation has ever launched once, the
installer now says so explicitly and defers rather than guessing, with
clear instructions to connect once and re-run. Verified against GOW's
actual real template: the patch flips just RunInBackground (line count
unchanged, ROMDirectory and everything else untouched), is idempotent on
re-run, and the skip-when-absent gate was verified directly against both
the missing-file and populated-file cases.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLX1yYKJExGSXmgUhxKQG6
Claude
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