geprotondl

CLI to download latest or manage your GE-Proton for Steam

• Author: Tuncay D.
• Source: Github
• Update Notes: CHANGES
• License: MIT License

Introduction

Did you always wanted to install the newest GE-Proton from Glorious Eggroll, but constantly get confused how to download files with a graphical browser? And you don't like unpacking files manually? Well, today is your lucky day. This application can do all of this and less (wink wink to protonup). A commandline tool for automating the process to display description and list, check, download, install or remove GE-Proton packages, while staying in the terminal.

GE-Proton is an alternative to the Valve Proton in Steam. It gets faster updates and often has additional fixes.

demo.mp4

demo-fzf.mp4

Features

• supports only GE-Proton from Glorious Eggroll
• install or uninstall a package version
• list local installations
• list available versions from online repository
• display summary description
• automatically verify downloads
• no external dependency on a Python library
• no graphical user interface
• Steam only
• Linux only
• ... and much less!

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/thingsiplay/geprotondl
cd geprotondl
bash suggested_install.sh
geprotondl --help
# And if you have fzf installed, you can also try following command:
geprotondl-fzf

Requirements

This program is written in Python 3.10. No other Python library is required. Only the standard command tar is needed, which is installed at default on all Linux distributions anyway. The Bash script geprotondl-fzf.sh is not part of the core application and requires fzf to build and show an interactive menu.

Installation

Download directly from Github repository with:

git clone https://github.com/thingsiplay/geprotondl
cd geprotondl

geprotondl.py is the main application. Just copy the script into a folder in your system $PATH and give it the executable bit. You can also rename the file to remove the extension if you want. There is an optional installer suggested_install.sh script for convenience. It searches for an usable directory from $PATH and copy, rename and set permission of all commands. You can run the installer with arguments too, so it will only look for those folders.

bash suggested_install.sh

or

bash suggested_install.sh "$HOME/my/bin" "$HOME/another/path"

Following commands are provided afterwards:

1. geprotondl
2. geprotondl-fzf

Usage

When you run the application for the first time, it will download a small database file from Github containing the links and other information for each GE-Proton release. This file expires after 1 hour and will be re-downloaded next time.

Use $ geprotondl --help to list all options and their brief descriptions.

Location of GE-Proton installations

The folder where all versions are downloaded and installed into is searched each time the program starts. It will lookup for your Steam installation and use the subfolder "compatibilitytools.d", which is where Steam expects alternative Proton versions. Or force the usage of a specific folder with option -D DIR or --dir DIR.

Operational Modes

There are 3 distinct main operational modes: install, remove and test

With the option -i or --install the newest version of GE-Proton will be looked up and suggested for installation. Combine it with -l or --list to choose a specific version from the online repository. A version can be chosen by typing a number, which corresponds to a specific GE-Proton version in the list.

geprotondl --install --list

With the option -r or --remove the oldest version of GE-Proton found on your system is suggested for uninstall. Combine it with -l or --list to choose a specific version from local installations. A version can be chosen by typing a number, which corresponds to a specific GE-Proton version in the list.

geprotondl --remove --list

Use -t or --test to check if the newest version is installed on your system. If it's not, then the tag name of it will be output.

geprotondl --test

This is also helpful to test by combining with -T NAME or --tag NAME with a specific version. Option -b or --brief will change the output from full tagname to short version number only. However combining with a listing such as --list or --releases will always output the selected version.

Version Listing

To show a list without any user interaction for selection, use the listing option without an operational mode. To get a list of all local installed versions, use -l or --list .

geprotondl --list

And to get a list of all available versions ready for install from repository, use -L or --releases .

geprotondl --releases

Summary Info

Another great option is -s or --summary to print description and meta information about the selected GE-Proton version. Note, the program defaults to the newest online available one, if nothing else is specified or selected.

geprotondl --summary

The summary can be combined with the other options to get information of specific selected versions in example. And output can be customized to a degree too; check out -b or --brief and -H or --human .

Frontend Scripts

While these useful scripts are not part of the core application itself, they are still useful and created for your convenience.

geprotondl-fzf.sh

Uses external application fzf to build a menu with all available GE-Proton versions. While browsing the list, the current highlighted entry will show corresponding summary. The confirmed selection will be prompted for installation, but if it's already installed, it will ask to remove. Only use short options with single dash, such as -f because long options are currently not compatible. All options are forwarded to the main program geprotondl.py as well.

Additional files in use

These files are created by the script or optionally by the user. (Besides the downloaded and unpacked GE-Proton installations in the "compatibilitytools.d" folder.)

created automatically

• ~/.cache/geprotondl/releases.json: Main database to operate on. This file is downloaded from Github API on start of application and will expire after 1 hour. This is cached, so a re-download won't slow down with every usage of the program in short periods. Github has a limit how often the database can be accessed per hour. A re-download is required in order to detect any new available version of GE-Proton.

created automatically only by geprotondl-fzf.sh

• ~/.cache/geprotondl/*.summary: These are just text files and contain output of the --summary option for each GE-Proton version. This helps with the performance when scrolling through the dynamically created menu, as the summary is loaded every time the current selection focus changes.

temporary files (deleted automatically)

The program creates temporary folder to save downloads into. These are deleted after the job is done. The exact folders are determined by Python and the system. On my Archlinux based system they are found under /tmp and consist of random characters such as /tmp/tmpz4zmi290/ .