HBUpdater

About

HBUpdater is a one-stop-shop for managing and updating your Nintendo Switch Homebrew.

Features

• Downloads packages directly from github
• Easily install lots of popular Homebrew
• RCM injector (payloads downloaded from github)
• Tracks which homebrew and what versions you have installed, compatible with the Homebrew Appstore
• Content includes tools, emulators, media viewers, games, and more
• No longer visit 17.53 different places to make sure you have the latest version of everything

View update notes and install old/legacy versions

Built-in RCM injector

Demo

(Goes to youtube)

Requirements:

Works on: macOS, Windows, Linux
Python 3.6 or greater

How to use:

Windows:

• Extract HBUpdater.zip
• Install python
  • If you do a custom installation remember to install tcl/tk, add python to the path, and include pip
• In a command prompt type pip install -r requirements to install dependencies
• Double-click startHBUpdater.bat

Macintosh:

• Extract HBUpdater.zip
• Mac users may already have a compatible version of python installed, try double-clicking HBUpdater.py --If the file opens in a text reader, close the reader and right-click the file and open it with pylauncher
• If this still doesn't work, install python

Linux:

• Extract HBUpdater.zip
• Navigate to the directory in a terminal
• Type python HBUpdaterGUI.py
  • If you are missing dependencies do the following:
  • sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-tk python3-pil.imagetk
• If you don't know how to do this you should probably be using Windows.
• For access to USB functions you must run python with elevated privledges (sudo)

TroubleShooting:

Mac:

• Error:
  • ssl.SSLCertVerificationError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1056)
• Solution:
  • Macintosh HD > Applications > Python3.6 folder (or whatever version of python you're using) > double click on "Install Certificates.command" file

How it works:

###NOTICE: I WILL BE MOVING TO A BETTER REPO SYSTEM IN THE FUTURE, DETAILS SOON(tm).

The big picture

repo collection

repo stitiching

repo distribution

repo parsing

package management

Short and sweet: The repository (AKA HBUpdater_packages): A package repository broken out into package.json files with info that can't or shouldn't be gleaned from the github api, these lay out author, package name, releases api link, etc. This repository can be found here: https://github.com/LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdater_packages.

The backend (AKA HBUpdater_API): A script periodically (every 30 minutes) queries the github api with an auth token to grab updated api files for each package at https://api.github.com/repos/__organization__/__repo__, it then bundles the api files, checks them agains a previous version, and if anything has changed releases this bundle at: https://github.com/LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdater_API/releases

The frontend (AKA HBUpdater): Any tool that interacts with the api should be able to grab a github release. The api file is grabbed from https://api.github.com/repos/LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdater_API/releases, the latest release is found, downloaded, and parsed into categories by an intermediate tool.

repo collection

Package entries are found here at HBUpdater_packages.

repo stitching

The repo builder is the repomaker_server.py script located in the source of LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdater_API. It accesses the github api using a github token. The purpose of the token is twofold, it allows the repo builder to exceed the normal 60 api requests / hour as well as make releases in its own repo. This means the "releases" section of the LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdater_API repo source on github acts as an etagged "server" for the repo json. The repo builder goes through each entry in the repo and grabs the api json, it then adds the loaded api json to the info grabbed from the repository.

repo distribution

When each entry has had an updated json object appended the whole object is organized into a larger json object and dumped. If any content in the json has changed it gets pushed as a new release to github, with the tag name incrementing by one.

The receiving app (LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdaterGUI) grabs the repo file by getting the github api releases json at https://api.github.com/repos/LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdater_API/releases, which contains a link to the latest release of the HBUpdater_API repo.

repo parsing

The receiving app (LyfeOnEdge/HBUpdaterGUI) parses the json into mapped lists based on category. Each category is displayed on a page in the app.

package management

HBUpdater uses a heavily modified python rewrite of vgmoose's libget It should be compatible with vgmooses Homebrew Appstore, except packages not also offered by the appstore will not show up in vgmoose's appstore.

Want to contribute? Have ideas? Questions? Great!

You can find me here: 4TU/Switchbru