Writing Fixdats

"Fixdats" are DATs that contain only ROMs that are missing from your collection. Fixdats are derived from some other DAT (see the DATs introduction docs for how to obtain DATs), containing only a subset of its ROMs. Fixdats are specific to the state of each person's ROM collection, so they aren't necessarily meaningful to other people.

Fixdats help you find files missing from your collection, and they can be used to generate a collection of those files once you've found them. This sub-collection of files can then be merged back into your main collection.

The fixdat command creates a Logiqx XML DAT for every input DAT (the --dat <path|glob|url> option) that is missing ROMs. Fixdats will be written to the first matching directory in this list:

1. If provided: the --fixdat-output <path> directory
2. When writing ROMs (one of the copy, move, or link commands): the --output <path> directory
3. Otherwise: the CLI working directory

Example usage:

Windows macOS Linux

igir copy zip fixdat ^
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy.dat" ^
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.dat" ^
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.dat" ^
  --input ROMs ^
  --output ROMs-Sorted

igir copy zip fixdat \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.dat" \
  --input ROMs \
  --output ROMs-Sorted

igir copy zip fixdat \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.dat" \
  --input ROMs \
  --output ROMs-Sorted

This command will produce a fixdat file in the ROMs-Sorted/ directory for each of the three input DATs that have at least one ROM that wasn't found in the ROMs/ input directory:

ROMs-Sorted/
├── Nintendo - Game Boy (20230414-173400) fixdat.dat
├── Nintendo - Game Boy Advance (20230414-173400) fixdat.dat
└── Nintendo - Game Boy Color (20230414-173400) fixdat.dat

Info

Fixdats are affected by filter & 1G1R options. This is because those options are applied to all DATs before ROM matching happens.

Without input files

The fixdat command doesn't require the --input <path|glob> option, which allows for some lightweight DAT creation functionality. Below are some examples of what you can achieve.

Example

Generate a DAT of retail Nintendo 64 games that were only released in Japan (requires two steps):

Windows macOS Linux

igir fixdat ^
  --dat "No-Intro*.zip" ^
  --dat-name-regex "/Nintendo 64/i" ^
  --single ^
  --prefer-region USA,EUR,JPN ^
  --only-retail ^
  --fixdat-output N64-1G1R.dat

igir fixdat ^
  --dat N64-1G1R.dat ^
  --filter-region JPN ^
  --fixdat-output N64-JPN.dat

del N64-1G1R.dat

igir fixdat \
  --dat "No-Intro*.zip" \
  --dat-name-regex "/Nintendo 64/i" \
  --single \
  --prefer-region USA,EUR,JPN \
  --only-retail \
  --fixdat-output N64-1G1R.dat

igir fixdat \
  --dat N64-1G1R.dat \
  --filter-region JPN \
  --fixdat-output N64-JPN.dat

rm N64-1G1R.dat

igir fixdat \
  --dat "No-Intro*.zip" \
  --dat-name-regex "/Nintendo 64/i" \
  --single \
  --prefer-region USA,EUR,JPN \
  --only-retail \
  --fixdat-output N64-1G1R.dat

igir fixdat \
  --dat N64-1G1R.dat \
  --filter-region JPN \
  --fixdat-output N64-JPN.dat

rm N64-1G1R.dat

Example

Generate a split set DAT of non-bootleg arcade games:

Windows macOS Linux

igir fixdat ^
  --dat "mame*.xml" ^
  --merge-roms split ^
  --only-retail

igir fixdat \
  --dat "mame*.xml" \
  --merge-roms split \
  --only-retail

igir fixdat \
  --dat "mame*.xml" \
  --merge-roms split \
  --only-retail