There's no easy way to keep track of all existing emulators out there, and keep them up-to-date. To make it worse, what if you want a stable and a developer release of the same emulator? It makes it even more difficult! Scoop helps you get the programs you need, with a minimal amount of point-and-clicking. It's highly scalable and easily customized. It's almost like a package manager our *NIX friends know and love. It makes it easy to download, install, update and uninstall apps on your computer, as easy as scoop install <app-name>, cool right? I've always struggled to get my emulators in the latest version, there's just so many! So one day I've found the emulators bucket from hermanjustnu and decided to expand on it. So my repository includes fixes, added more emulators and is open for more, check our contribution guide.
Make sure PowerShell 5 (or later, include PowerShell Core) and .NET Framework 4.5 (or later) are installed. Then run:
Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://get.scoop.sh')
# or shorter
iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex
Scoop will be installed by default on your user's home folder, likely on C:\Users\<username>\scoop\.
To make it easy to install apps from this bucket, with scoop installed, run
scoop bucket add emulators https://github.com/borger/scoop-emulators.git
The bucket will be installed on C:\Users\<username>\scoop\buckets\emulators\.
To find which apps are available to install (from all installed buckets), run
scoop search
With the emulators' scoop bucket installed, run
scoop install <app-name>
# examples:
scoop install retroarch
scoop install citra-nightly
The emulators will be installed on C:\Users\<username>\scoop\apps\<app-name>\current. For each installed emulator there will be key folders or files that will persist across your installs/updates, this is managed by Scoop, which is very convenient, especially if you want to keep your save data and customizations across installations. Shortcuts will be automatically created on your start menu.
Unfortunately as of today, there's no way to specify a custom install folder per installed app in Scoop, there is however an alternative for that. You can create a Symbolic Link and basically add a living shortcut to where you want your emulator to be located. For that, open a command prompt as Administrator and run
mklink /D "<destination-path>" "C:\Users\<username>\scoop\apps\<app-name>\current"
To update scoop itself, run
scoop update
To update all the apps installed on your computer via Scoop, run
scoop update *
To update a specific emulator via scoop, run
scoop update <app-name>
# examples:
scoop update retroarch
scoop update citra-nightly
If you're like me and don't want to remember commands, or even to update, you can very simply create a PowerShell script and perhaps even add it to Windows' Task Scheduler, to run daily or in your preferred schedule. The script contents would just be:
scoop update
scoop update *
This bucket will always have at least one commit per day for the nightly builds. And is immediately updated once the included emulators get a newer version.
Thank you for considering contributing to the Emulators Scoop Bucket! You may propose new features or improvements of existing bucket behavior in the GitHub issue board. If you propose a new feature, please be willing to implement at least some of the code that would be needed to complete the feature.
- lukesampson for creating Scoop and the original Retroarch manifest.
- hermanjustnu for the original scoop-emulator repo.
- Ash258 for creating the original RPCS3 manifest.