[rdmrocha]

Why

Producing an exFAT-wrapped game image today depends on the host OS and elevated privileges: it shells out to newfs_exfat/mkfs.exfat, mounts a loopback/disk image (losetup/hdiutil/OSFMount), copies files in as root/admin, and unmounts.

That means three divergent code paths, external tools that must be installed, and admin rights — and it cannot run unprivileged or on a machine without the right filesystem tooling. It also forces a two-step workflow (build a full .exfat, then compress it), so peak disk is roughly double the game size while both the intermediate image and the output exist.

This PR removes all of that. exFAT is built and read entirely in pure Python — no mount, no root, no external binaries — identically on macOS, Linux, and Windows, and the folder→.ffpfsc path runs in a single streaming pass with no temporary .exfat on disk.
mkpfs pack folder ./game ./game.ffpfsc now wraps the folder in an exFAT and compresses it straight into the .ffpfsc in one pass.

New commands and flags

• pack folder (default): folder → exFAT → .ffpfsc in one pass, no temp image.
• pack folder --raw: pack the folder directly as PFS (the previous default).
• pack exfat <dir> [out]: build a raw .exfat image (auto-named <titleId>.exfat).
• unpack --deep: extract the files inside a wrapped exFAT, not the inner .exfat.
• tree --deep: list the files inside a wrapped exFAT.

How it works

• Forward-only exFAT serializer: computes the full layout up front (sizes are known after scanning) and emits the image in strict offset order, so the byte stream feeds straight into the compressor — no intermediate file, flat memory.
• Read-only exFAT parser over any seekable source, plus a PFSC-backed view so a .ffpfsc can be peeled to its inner contents without writing a temp .exfat.
• Multicore compression on the fused path (bounded look-ahead thread pool; zlib-ng releases the GIL), deterministic output.
• Inner image is named <titleId>.exfat from sce_sys/param.json.
• OS-generated metadata (.DS_Store, ._*, __MACOSX, Thumbs.db, …) is excluded consistently across packing, the AMPR index, and verify.

Disk and speed

• Peak disk drops to source + output (no inner .exfat, no doubling).
• Fused compression scales across cores (≈6x vs single-threaded in local tests), byte-identical regardless of worker count.

Validation

• The generated exFAT is accepted by a real PS5 (boot-tested via ShadowMountPlus), is fsck_exfat-clean, and mounts/reads correctly under the macOS kernel driver.
• Round-trip tested through an independent in-tree exFAT reader; committed tests use a tiny gzipped fixture (no mount, portable). Full suite green.

Notes

• The fused path is unsigned only; use --raw for signed PFS images.

Dependencies

This branch is stacked on two PRs and should be merged after both:

• Faster unpack compression backend #62
• AMPR emulation automated index and OS-metadata exclusion for folder packing #63

[RenanGBarreto]

I've merged a couple of PRs you sent @rdmrocha , but now we have conflicts on this one. Can you please take a look when you have time? Once this one is merged, I will do a couple of tests and release a new version.

Thanks for all the contibutions you are making in the the last few weeks.

[rdmrocha]

I've merged a couple of PRs you sent @rdmrocha , but now we have conflicts on this one. Can you please take a look when you have time? Once this one is merged, I will do a couple of tests and release a new version.

Thanks for all the contibutions you are making in the the last few weeks.

Rebased against your latest master.
I've experienced massive improvements while compressing files, specially now that we can go straight from folder to exfat+ffpfsc without any intermediate formats or temporary files. Tested on 3 games, all ran fine on my 10.01 PS5. Please do test it to make sure no critical bugs remain. If something fails, let me know the PPSA that is yielding weird results.

[RenanGBarreto]

I am working into merge his into the main branch. I implemented a few changes to solve issues I faced when converting using an external drive. I also implemented the exFAT support for the verify, unpack and tree commands.

Sadly the latest commit you did has a conflict with my changes; now I am trying to solve the confict