Loading homebrew from the Wii U Menu / WUHB (Wii U Homebrew Bundle)
This feature has been teased and discussed quite a lot already. With Aroma the way of loading homebrew will change. Previously it was loaded by a dedicated homebrew launcher, which loaded the executable in the memory and then ran it (in the case of a .rpx it’s a bit more complicated though). Now with the latest version of Mocha it’s really easy and clean to run homebrew with just a few lines of code. Instead of having to rely on the homebrew launcher, we can now explore options.
In a time where a forwarder channel gets created for every single homebrew, it’s an obvious choice to support this form of loading homebrew. Aroma will provide a plugin, which scans the .rpx and .wuhb files on your SD card and display them on your Wii U Menu. Thus, you would be able to launch homebrew from the home menu, without actually installing anything!
This is where WUHB, the Wii U Homebrew Bundle format, comes into play. It allows homebrew applications together with additional data to be stored into a single file. This simplifies distribution and installation. Besides the executable (.rpx), a WUHB file embeds meta information (splash screen, icon, name of application/author) and can hold up to 4GiB of additional files. These additional files can be accessed via /vol/content like a “real” channel. The homebrew toolchain wut has built-in support for creating .wuhb files, please take a look at the wut examples.
At the time of writing this, it will only be possible to load homebrew directly from the Wii U Menu. Creating a homebrew launcher alternative would be possible, but I decided to not spent any time on that. Parsing the meta data from a .wuhb and launching a .rpx/.wuhb is really straight forward, if anybody wants to create a “modern” homebrew launcher and needs assistance, let me know on the Aroma Discord.
Note 1:.elf homebrew are not and will never be supported by Aroma due to technical limitations. To continue using these homebrew apps, you need to launch into Tiramisu. Note 2: Not all .rpx files will be compatible out of the box. Make sure the application doesn’t launch it’s own exploits and implements the ProcUI loop properly. If you have trouble with this please join the Aroma Discord.
