Upspear

Latest release: 0.15 (15/03/2006)

Upspear is a new application to fully manage the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), from a PC. It's thought for PSPs with firmware 1.50, at least for the moment. Support for other firmwares may be added in the future, if you think you need it, convince me :).

At the moment you can:

Install new homebrews in a very simple way.
See the homebrews you have installed, rename and delete them.
Reorder installed homebrews to your liking.
See your savegames and delete the ones you don't need anymore.
Backup your savegames to zip-compressed files on your PC.
Hide/unhide "Corrupt data" icons or push them to the bottom of the list.
Kxploit a 1.0 eboot.pbp, making it work under 1.5 firmwares.
Identify useless folders in psp/game.
View the contents of a .SFO format file (i. e.: param.sfo).
See information about the memory stick.

Upspear also has the following features:

No spyware, adware or any other form of malware.
No registry bloat, settings are saved in files within the user directory. No lost settings after a fresh installation.
No awkward setup/installer, no system changes, system bloat and trash.

(Shamelessly copied from StaxRip - http://www.planetdvb.net/staxrip/)

All these functions can be performed through the nice graphical interface the program has. The program itself is in English, but it uses GNU gettext, which means that it can be easily translated in other languages. At the moment only an Italian translation is available, but anybody can submit more translations, see the "Contributing" section below if you're interested.

Upspear is a project hosted by Gna!, http://gna.org, and you can find its homepage at http://home.gna.org/upspear/. There you will find the latest releases, together with Upspear's Subversion repository, as well as some mailing lists which you can join to talk with other users and with the developers.

Upspear is programmed in C, using the GTK+ toolkit. Development is done under GNU/Linux, but the program runs with no problems on other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS X. The program is released under the GPL, so it is free software (as in "free speech", not as in "free beer"). This gives every user many benefits, such as full access to the source code and the rights to modify it to any degree. See the "Contributing" section below and the COPYING file for further details.

Many things have still to be implemented, as I don't have as much time to spend on it as I would like, but basic features are there, and it should never crash (hopefully :D). People are welcome to use and test the program. Should you encounter any bugs/crashes, you can open a bug report on the project page, at https://gna.org/projects/upspear/, or you can send an e-mail to sukkopera@psp-tribe.com.

Statistics: Homepage - Downloads

Screenshots

Contributing

Upspear is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which basically means that you can get the sources and modify them as much as you like, as long as you release all your modifications under the same license. Although, even though the license does not require it, I would be glad if you mailed me any modifications you do, so that we can keep a single version of the program around, which means less confusion for the users :).

Indeed, if you have a lot of ideas about the program, you are welcome to join the development team. See the program homepage or mail me for any info. You can also contribute translations in your language. If you know how to do it, just mail me the corresponding .po file, otherwise mail me and I'll help you.

We also need packages for more GNU/Linux distributions: SuSE, RedHat/Fedora, Mandrake, etc..., and testing on other UNIX flavours, such as the various BSD systems, Solaris, etc...

Downloads

GNU/Linux

Prerequisites

Upspear uses the GTK+ toolkit and libglade for its graphical interface, and glib for many things. Therefore you will need:

This is no big pain, as these libraries are very popular on UN*X systems, and they are usually shipped with major distributions. Remember that to compile things, you also need the "-dev" packages.

Usually, UN*X users compile the programs they use themselves, as these are distributed in source code form. Upspear is no exception, so you can build it yourself, or you can get a package for your distribution. At the moment only Slackware and Ubuntu 64-bit packages are available (because that's what I use :D), but users are welcome to submit packages for other distributions.

Files

Sources: upspear-0.15.tar.gz
Slackware 10.2 package (should also work on earlier versions): upspear-0.15-i486-1suk.tgz
Ubuntu 5.04 64-bit package: upspear_0.15_amd64.deb

Windows

Windows users usually use (:p) binary packages. Upspear is distributed in two different binary forms. For the brave, the source code is also available (it's the same as the Linux version).

Standalone binary distribution (i. e.: "The easy and lame, but cool way")

If you downloaded this one (that is, if the file you downloaded is named "upspear-X.Y-win32-standalone.zip"), you just need to unpack it wherever you like ("c:\program files" is fine, as is a folder on your desktop, or whatever), and double click on the "upspear.exe" file. You can also make a shortcut in your Start menu if you prefer, but it's up to you to do it. In the "bin" directory you will also find a program named "GtkThemeSelector", that you can use to change GTK+ themes.

The cool thing with this package is that you can even unpack it to your PSP's memory stick, so that you can run the program on every PC you connect your PSP to! This makes Upspear really "portable", in all senses! ;)

Small binary distribution (i. e.: "The professional way")

If you have downloaded this one, you probably did it because the file was much smaller. It is smaller because it doesn't include all the libraries the program needs, as does the standalone package. This way, Upspear expects to find such libraries installed in the system, so you must do that before running it. Actually it's quite easy: just grab the Glade/GTK+ runtime environment from http://gladewin32.sourceforge.net, and install it. Now unzip "upspear-X.Y-win32-small.zip" wherever you like (there's no need to put it where you installed the runtime environment, it will find it automatically), and double click on "upspear.exe". Again, you can put a shortcut to your Start menu, but it's up to you.

What is cool with this package is that when newer versions of Upspear are released, you don't need to redownload/reinstall the runtime environment, but just the small Upspear package, saving download time.

Files

Standalone binary distribution: upspear-0.15-win32-standalone.zip
Small binary distribution: upspear-0.15-win32-small.zip

MacOS X

MacOS X stuff will be available shortly.

Credits

Main coding and Italian translation:
- SukkoPera <sukkopera AT psp-tribe.com>

Original PBP Packing/Unpacking code:
- Dan Peori <peori AT oopo.net>
- rpineau (Big endian support)

Original PSF File parsing code:
- Chris Barrera a.k.a. Gorim <wildwabbit AT gmail.com>

MacOSX and other fixes:
- Matteo Giani <matteo.giani AT gmail.com>

ZIP files handling code taken from:
- zlib (http://www.zlib.net)

timeval.h for Win32:
- Wu Yongwei (http://wyw.dcweb.cn)

Various bits and pieces taken from:
- GNOME File-Roller (http://fileroller.sourceforge.net)
- Perl (http://www.cpan.org)

Want to contribute? Just mail SukkoPera! We are looking for translators, packagers and developers!