Hi Roman.
In the past few weeks, we have added in MESS support for software lists (in xml format). In other words, MESS is now including software info (in xml format) like MAME does, in addition to bios info.
Software lists currently work as follows:
* -listxml output now has a <softwarelist> item for systems which supports xml lists (as if it's a device for the system)
* a new command, -listsoftware allows to either export all the supported xml lists (if launched as
mess.exe -listsoftware) or a single xml list for a given system (if launched as e.g.
mess.exe pokemini -listsoftware)
Notice that the xml structure is basically a simplified version of the MAME one (see
http://git.redump.net/cgit.cgi/mess/tree/hash/softwarelist.dtd )
Now, let me move to the point of this post: is there any hope to see clrmame directly support our lists [1]? and if so, is there anything we can do to help you with your side of the work? e.g. would it be eaier if all lists appear in the main listxml output? or would you prefer the current approach where we leave lists as a separate output?
A possible setup might be:
- clrmame runs mess -lx
- then, it parses the output looking for <softwarelist>
- finally, it offers to the user the choice of using one of the lists to rebuild or scan a directory (and the actual xml to be used can be called by running again mess with "system -listsoftware" parameter)
Alternatively, clrmame might create profiles for each of the software lists, when it parses the listxml output... or even ask the user if he wants to import the software list...
Not knowing the inner structure of clrmame, I have no idea if any of the proposals fits clrmame architecture, but I would be interested to know if there is any hope for this.
Regards
[1] I think it's already possible (but I haven't tried) to use our xml to produce a clrmame dat for the specific systems, by using logiqx tools... but it's a procedure which is a bit too complicate, compared to how easy is to scan MESS bioses and MAME romsets