Compiling has changed for 0.246 onwards

[Robert]

As you may have known, under src/mame there were drivers, machine, includes, video and layout. This has now all changed. The layout folder is still there as before, but the others are gone. Now there are a number of folders roughly based on classification such as manufacturer or some other idea. Inside each of these are the actual drivers (cpp files). This is supposed to make things easier for the next big step but I'm not really convinced - but it's how it is now.

arcade.lua and mess.lua have been deleted, the compile process will now look through the files and compile them all. If you had some spare stuff tucked away in an unused folder it will try to compile them too. You can place limitations on what is compiled by using a .flt file, such as arcade.flt

One drawback is if files get rearranged, as they have been quite often, instead of the compiler automatically handling it as before, now you get a compile error. The official way around this is to use REGENIE=1, but when I tried it I got a file-not-found error (it didn't say what file of course). So you can try deleting build/projects/winui/mamearcade/gmake-mingw64-gcc/Makefile, and if that doesn't work you can delete all the files in build/mingw-gcc/bin/x64/Release/mame_mame . (Folder names in italics may be different for your setup). After doing those things it should compile - until next time.

One other change is that you're not limited to arcade.flt and mess.flt - you can have whatever names you feel like (official builds only).

Effects on our builds:

- The changes to verinfo.py and main.lua to get the above to work broke all the winui builds, so those 2 scripts had to be reverted back to what they were at 0.245, and so the expanded flt naming is not available for us.

- If you compile your own winui builds you need to look very carefully at my compile scripts on release day to see how to get it to work. It is no longer straightforward as it used to be.

- The file rearrangement is incompatible with the design of HBMAME, so it will stay at the 0.245 base, and releases will have an extra digit on the end (currently 0.245.2)

 

One more change for MESS, MESSUI, MAMEUI and ARCADE64:

The version number will have an extra ".0" on the end. This is to indicate that our build is not precisely the same as MAME - even though the changes are mostly just stability adjustments. So the next MAMEUI will be 0.246.0 rather than just 0.246 .

Apart from all that, the emulators themselves should work the same as before, and therefore have no effect upon the end user.

 

[pmc2]

Salut and thanks,

maybe you should use a system like the mame history (v2.46 = 0.246 etc) it would be clearer for users because de facto we understand that it is the official mame without necessarily being identical. this is just an opinion of course.

Otherwise robert, I saw in the source of mame 246 that neomania and neoprint are in the misc directory, except I think they should be in that of the neogeo, do you think this is an oversight on the part of those who have reorganized? That doesn't seem very consistent to me...is this normal or to be corrected?

(sorry for my bad english ;))