core folder & Bigbox suddenly cannot find theme file

[markmon]

Everything was fine and then suddenly bigbox is presenting an error dialog that it cannot find a theme file:

\Core\Themes\CriticalZoneV2-BlueBox\Styles\HorizontalListBoxItemStyle.xaml

In fact, none of the xaml files are there and it gives those errors, too. 

I investigated a bit more, and the entire Themes folder is empty inside launchbox\core\themes. If I copy the CriticalZoneV2-BlueBox theme from Launchbox\Themes to Launchbox\Core\Themes\  bigbox finds all the files and works correctly. But exiting bigbox wipes out the core\themes folder on exit and then the error is back on next start.

I copied the Themes\CriticalZoneV2-BlueBox folder into core\themes\ and then made it recursively read only and the problem seems solved.  But I'm guessing this isn't a real solution. So a couple questions:

 

1) What is the core folder for in the first place? It seems to duplicate a ton of files including lauchbox and bigbox.exe

2) Why would the themes folder be emptied on exit?

3) Why all the sudden would this be a problem?

[Zkyo]

I'm not a developer so I can't answer any of those questions, but I have seen this same error pop up quite a few times because I'm impatient. Every time it's happened, I've been moving between views too quickly. Or, if I select a large list that takes a while to load, then select a different menu before it changes over.

Lately I've been making a point of not rushing. If I press a button and hear the audio cue, don't touch anything until it changes pages. For some of my long games lists (100+ games) , it can take up to 20 seconds to change over. But I haven't seen that error since. 

My guess is that core/themes is a working or temporary directory, so moving too quickly could make BB try to load a temporary file that doesn't exist yet.

 

[markmon]

Yea it's definitely not caused by moving too fast. The PC boots into bigbox and sits there. Later you touch one button and the error pops up. If you alt tab out, you can see that entire folder is empty still. I can then copy the theme folder into the core theme folder and everything works. As soon as I exit bigbox, it clears that core theme folder out again and it never repopulates. Not sure what could spontaneously cause this as it was working fine before.  Perhaps instead of making that folder read-only a better fix is to copy the theme folder to core theme folder in my bigbox launch ahk every time. 

[Zkyo]

My launchbox/core/themes folder is empty too, copying the launchbox/themes folder shouldn't be necessary at all. Are you able to launch it if you use a different theme? 

Did this per chance start when you updated to 12.14? 

[markmon]

I never updated to 12.14. I disable auto updates. I'm on 12.13.. Then it's odd that the theme won't work without specific xaml files located in that core themes folder. I'm sure picking another theme will work.  It would be great to understand why the theme is looking for files in the core\themes folder instead of the themes\ folder to begin with and if they aren't supposed to be there, why were they there for months leading up to now.

Edited August 10, 2022 by markmon

[Retro808]

LB creates symlinks in the \Core\Themes folder. If those symlinks are gone the theme does not work correctly. The change to the \Core folder had something to do with a lot of the back-end changes in coding LB went through a while back.

Is your LB on an external drive by chance?

[markmon]

On 8/9/2022 at 8:05 PM, Retro808 said:

LB creates symlinks in the \Core\Themes folder. If those symlinks are gone the theme does not work correctly. The change to the \Core folder had something to do with a lot of the back-end changes in coding LB went through a while back.

Is your LB on an external drive by chance?

Thank you this is good information. No, I run it all on h:, which is a local SSD. So instead of copying the theme files and making them read-only, should I deleted that copied folder and do a:

mklink /D "core\themes\CriticalZoneV2 - BlueBox" "themes\CriticalZoneV2 - BlueBox"

?

Any idea why this would suddenly stop working? What is the bigbox start and exit flow regarding the current theme? Does it make the link on launch and remove the link on exit?