Do not have every single base patch in the patch stack at all times

[Nutzer]

Currently, thcrap_configure generates a single patch stack configuration for all games, which includes all base patches (at this time base_tsa and base_tasforo.
This allows users to e.g. only configure TSA games, and to then add tasforo games to games.js later on.

However, This creates a significant overhead for patches, since thcrap has to search through each patch in the current stack when a file is requested.
This seems to be especially noticable in tasforo games.

Once the game has been identified, we only need one base patch (the one that is relevant to the current game) to be loaded.
This would reduce the overhead and allow for the addition of more base patches without affecting the performance of the already existing patches.
I can think of three ways to accomplish this:

• Remove base patches irrelevant to the current game as soon as it has been identified
  This was already implemented in thcrap previously (e9f126a) on a by-patch basis but later removed since wrapper patches (vpatch, thprac) cause thcrap to go through the patch-initialization step multiple times (9f9f95c).
  However, we could do the patch stack pruning only once the game has been positively identified (which is after all of the wrapper patches are done, but before any of the plugins are loaded).
  See e21eb67 (corresponding branch) for an example implementation of this.
  This is definitely the easiest to implement, and doesn't require a reconfiguration.
• Load base patches dynamically, instead of including them in the configuration
  Since base patches are somewhat special, maybe they shouldn't be included in the patch configuration at all.
  Instead, thcrap could look through all base patches when starting, and only adding a base patch to the stack if it identified the game by hash or size.
  This also wouldn't be that hard to implement, but would require a reconfiguration of patches. It would also clash with the updater.
• Create different patch configurations per base patch when configuring games
  Since the main reason to keep every base patch in the stack is to allow users to change their config.js later on, maybe thcrap_configure could generate multiple configuration variants with different base patches (en-tsa.js, en-tasforo.js) etc. The user would then only need to change the patch stack depending on the game.
  This would also require a reconfiguration.

[DankRank]

Would it also be useful to prune non-base patches?

[Nutzer]

I thing that's hard to do with the way the patches are currently set up.
It might make sense for western_name_order and script_latin, which are also always added by default and where base_tsa is the only dependency.
For other patches, I tink it's less of a problem there since these patches are not added by default, and have to be set by the user explicitly.
(I'm mostly interested in base patches at this point, since I'm looking into adding additional base patches without affecting the performance of thcrap_tasforo.)

[DankRank]

I thing that's hard to do with the way the patches are currently set up.

What's the issue with that? If it's determining which patches support which games, we could add a list of supported games to patch.js (with the fallback default being all games).

Or is it something else?

[Nutzer]

Ah, sorry, I wasn't sure if it was okay to just change the patch format.
The list of supported games is a great idea. I added it to my example here.