Software [Solved] Pandafe does not launch ROMs anymore after I updated my Emulator and/or after I used the SD card on a Mac ( root cause)

[porg]

Your Pandafe ROMs do not launch anymore and instead give you Error: No program found to run 'PND/ROM name'. ?
After you updated an emulator and/or had used your SD card in a Mac?

→ This updated How To from 2023-01-11 may help you.

Or the bug that causes it. For die-hard Pandora / Pandafe fans:

→ Pandafe: app-id-type: prefix doesn't match program definition file but instead opens its "._" sidecar file (Apple Double file on FAT/ExFAT SD card)

 

[porg]

Btw, a funny to read veteran developer story behind the ".DS_Store" files that the Finder creates:

Back in 1999 I was the technical lead for the Mac OS X Finder at Apple.

…

There is also an unfortunate bug that is not fixed to this day [remark: 2006] that result in an excessive creation of .DS_Store file. Those files should only be created if the user actually makes adjustments to the view settings or set a manual location for icons in a folder. That’s unfortunately not what happens and visiting a folder pretty much guarantees that a .DS_Store file will get created.

The same seems to be true for "._" AppleDouble files, still in 2023. While I had pandafe's appdata on the SD card open in my Mac Finder and inspected/hacked some of its config/cache files, I did nothing which requires metadata, such as custom icons or icon positions or Finder Tags or Finder comments. Nevertheless that "._pcsx_rearmed.notaz" sidecar file got created, which triggered Pandafe's bug due to an uncleanly written RegEx which checks the "prefix" name condition.

The shortcoming of Apple's Finder together with the shortcomings of Pandafe's filename parser together created a creative bug .

This was real hard to debug. Only detected in the long run. Back then I couldn't explain it by any rational means and discarded it as "voodoo" and did a complete re-flash of the SD card that held the ROMs and started with a new appdata directory for Pandafe. Now years later, as I had the same symptoms again, but nothing else that could explain it, only then the possible cause of ._ sidecars being falsely matched came to my mind, and through meticulous testing I got that bug eventually.

 

[netcat]

Oh Apple, the design gods.... too proud to admit they ever made a mistake. Their products are actually unrefined and clunky but shiny so people lap them up. Finder has always been a disaster.