[tools] RomVault 2.0.0

January 8th, 2013, ROMVault 2.0.0 Officially Released

• So around August time of 2011, I was working with the code of RomVault 1.7 and was starting to get frustrated with the direction it was heading. The biggest problem was that the core data structured used internally by RV1.7 was based around trying to look like the list of DAT that it scanned in from DATRoot. This sounds correct but I was running into problems like this: where do I store the information about any files I find in a directory that is not in one of the DAT directories. The scanning code was starting to do more and more fixing, so that it could complete a scan, like copying unknown directories and files over to ToSort. Also as I am sure all you RV1.7 users know, there was no clean way in the data structure to store the status of the Tree of DATs as displayed in the UI, so it kept on resetting itself, as it was not really a tree structure at all, just a list of DATs displayed as a tree. This was all heading in the wrong direction fast.
• So I realized I had the change the core data structure, as what I am really working with is actually not DATs, I am really processing a structure of Files and Directories. (The DATs are just a way of representing the list of files you want to collect.) So I started to rework the core data structure to be a structure that would hold a tree of Files and Directories, and at that time back in August 2011, I figured a couple of months of work, build the new core structure, put all the old scanning and fixing code back on top of it and RomVault 2.0 would be ready to go.
• The new core data structure was made, and then I converted over the DAT loader, and then got the File scanner going, and everything was going along good and then I started working on the Finding Fixes code, and then got into a world of CRC's, SHA1's and MD5's, it was probably around 10 months ago we (that’s me and my great Beta testers) realized that just fixing on CRC’s and file size alone was not going to cut it. So after a couple more month Levels of scanning and fixing where born, and then after a few more months Levels of scanning and fixing where about working, and then the improved DAT loader was developed, and oh yes, the Missing report code was never converted over, and then the idea of supporting filenames greater than 260 characters came along, and fast Zip processing was added………..
• You get the idea, the project just kept on snowballing. So here we are today around 16 months later, with what is RomVault 2.0.0, with 40'ish private Beta version being tested, about 300 check-ins to the source control. (So that works out at about one check-in every 1.5 days for over 18 months!!!,You did already click on that Donate button over there of the left, I hope.)
• Is RomVault 2.0.0 finished? No, nothing is ever finished, there is a great big list of things still to be added to it, but it is a great big step up from 1.7. So before you ask there are 2 things still at the top of the to-do list, so Sorry, there is still no 7z support, and still no CHD support. But I will put this another way, neither of those 2 features would ever have fitted into the 1.7 data structure, and so also look out for the 2.1 development cycle starting. (As I actually already have a private test version of RomVault that does to a limit degree support 7z.)