Plumber

Turns a zipped Windows game into a single .run installer for SteamOS: run it once, and the game is in the Steam library with its artwork and Proton set up.

Warning

Plumber is still being tested: use it at your own risk. If you run into a problem and want to help the project, open an issue on GitHub.

How to use

On a Windows PC:

1. Install the game.
2. Zip the folder it is installed in: right-click it and choose Compress to → ZIP File. On Windows 10 it is Send to → Compressed (zipped) folder.

In the browser, on the Plumber site:

3. Drop the zip onto the page.
4. Check the title and the executable, add artwork if you like, and build the installer: a single .run file.

On SteamOS:

5. Switch to Desktop Mode: press the Steam button, then Power → Switch to Desktop.
6. Copy the .run file over: a USB stick, a network share, whatever is at hand.
7. Right-click the file, open Properties, go to the Permissions tab and tick Is executable.
8. Double-click it. The installer asks where to put the game and which Proton version to run it with: if you are not sure, keep what is already selected.
9. Steam restarts by itself, and the game is in the library with its artwork. Double-click Return to Gaming Mode on the desktop and play.

Why everything is the way it is: SPEC.md.

Layout

• SPEC.md: the specification
• packages/installer (@plumber/installer): the installer that runs on SteamOS, see its README
• packages/frontend (@plumber/frontend): the web application that builds the .run installer

packages/frontend/app/ follows Flat Layers Design:

app/
  index.ts      entry point
  devtools.ts   in-page DevTools of the stores, development only
  styles.css    global CSS entry
  assets/       icons, fonts, images
  shared/       app-wide constants, types, pure utils
  services/     zip (central directory, Zip64), exe scoring, DLL wrappers,
                artwork, recipe, tar + gzip, .run assembly, browser downloads,
                preflight checks
  stores/       game, artwork, build, preflight: the wizard state
  uikit/        presentational components and design tokens
  blocks/       ArchivePicker, GameForm, ArtworkGrid, PreflightList, BuildPanel
  pages/        Home

The UI is written with nanoviews and @nano_kit/store. Where the browser has showSaveFilePicker (Chrome, Edge), the build streams the .run to disk through it. Anywhere else (Firefox, Safari, Brave) the browser downloads it as a Blob made of the header, meta and the archive File itself, so the archive is never read into memory either.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm updateGitHooks
pnpm dev          # dev server of the frontend; Alt+Shift+D opens the nano_kit DevTools
pnpm storybook    # Storybook on port 6006
pnpm test         # lint, types and unit tests of both packages
pnpm build        # production build into packages/frontend/dist/
pnpm preview      # serves that build locally
pnpm commit       # Conventional Commits, scoped by package

License

MIT