UI Simulator access Rockbox files

[tizxv22]

Hi, I recently installed the UISimulator for my own theme customization use, but I've found it useful to be able to play music stored on my device while connected to my laptop.

I'm not familiar with how the simulator works (I downloaded mine from https://marcrosoft.dk/rockbox/simulators/ linked on the wiki), but I noticed rockboxui.exe is outside the simdisk folder. If I wanted to store it in my mp3 player and access my files, how could I redirect it to understand that .rockbox and my folders/files are accessed from the same folder it's in?

To put it visually, the simulator is currently structured like:
.
├── simdisk
       ├── .rockbox
       ├── Music
       └── Playlists
├── rockboxui.exe
└── UI256.bmp

and what I want is
.
├──  .rockbox
├──  Music
├──  Playlists
├── rockboxui.exe
└── UI256.bmp

[Bilgus]

You'd need to compile a SDL APP build and I believe you'd get the second folder structure.

Being that you are using windows I'd suggest just using the precompiled sims
as you will likely spend a long time trying to get a environment set up to work in windows
with varied results

maybe stop by IRC and ask <MarcAndersen> about how they cross compile those Sim builds for windows

https://www.rockbox.org/irc/

[Frankenpod]

Would some sort of hard link or junction help?  So that you have such a link in the simdisk directory but which actually points to the folder you want your music in?

Not entirely sure what it is you are trying to accomplish, but just wondering if it would be amenable to the same trick that allows one to build the database via the (existing) sim, when the "music" directory isn't within the simdisk one.

This sort of thing - though I'm not sure if you are wanting the files in "different local volumes on the same computer" or "mapped network volumes"

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/hard-links-and-junctions

[saratoga]

Cross compiling on windows was pretty easy when I updated this last year. You could set this up in ~ 5 minutes:

https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/Windows10CrossCompiler.html

Not sure if the recent SDL changes will make it harder (maybe need different SDL libraries?).

[Bilgus]

Would some sort of hard link or junction help?  So that you have such a link in the simdisk directory but which actually points to the folder you want your music in?

Not entirely sure what it is you are trying to accomplish, but just wondering if it would be amenable to the same trick that allows one to build the database via the (existing) sim, when the "music" directory isn't within the simdisk one.

This sort of thing - though I'm not sure if you are wanting the files in "different local volumes on the same computer" or "mapped network volumes"

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/hard-links-and-junctions

Frankenpod great suggestion
This would work I think, we do have support..

Probably faster than compiling the app too but compiling would probably be your best bet as long as you can get it setup

[tizxv22]

Ah -- thanks for these resources! Junctions looked like the simplest solution so I looked into it, and it worked out! I wasn't able to do exactly what I wanted since I would've had to reformat my SD card to NTFS to have the junction on my SD card, but I was able to make a junction on my laptop that pointed to my SD card.

Thanks guys!