Re: [openMSX-devel] Config files

[Maarten t. H. <ma...@tr...>]

On Thursday 27 March 2003 18:57, Wouter Vermaelen wrote:

> > 3) And what do we do with the exampleconfigs.xml?

Since exampleconfigs.xml cannot be executed, the documentation directory is 
probably the right place for it. However, the fact it cannot be executed also 
means that verifying it is a manual process, which is more likely to fail 
than the automatic process of running a machine from a configuration.

> I don't care much for it. In the next release its functionality (showing
> all devices and their possible parameters) will be replaced by DTD's.

Although DTDs contain the same information, it is in a different format. I 
think most users will find example XML easier to read than a DTD.

We have a lot of working configs in the openMSX distribution now; I think that 
copy-pasting the desired feature from a machine that includes it is probably 
good enough, so we don't need one XML with all features included.

> > 4) About the names of the ROM files mentioned in those config files. I
> > propose to use the names that are used on FUNet in the openMSX dir:
> > http://www.funet.fi/pub/msx/system_roms/openMSX Those names are not
> > perfect yet, but they are the most informative that you can find on the
> > net (atarulum and I came to these preliminary names...). Probably all
> > configs use these names, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
>
> Agreed, but we should also put "roms/" in front of each name. This is the
> directory structure we agreed upon.

Also, we should either .cvsignore the "roms/" directory, or all its contents. 
Currently I get too many "?" lines when I do "cvs update".

What about supplying MD5 sums for every ROM referred to? That way users can be 
warned if they using different ROMs than the person who made the hardware 
config. It also makes it easier to spot different revisions of the MSX 
machines: two machines marked "NMS 8250" may not be exactly the same. For 
example, the first machines included MSX BASIC 2.0, while later machines 
included MSX BASIC 2.1.

> > Last question: Wouter, did you get a chance to think about those paths
> > that are hardcoded? I still feel they should be more easily
> > configurable, for porters and packagers.
>
> I've looked over the code, but I don't think it needs changes. The only
> thing porters/packagers need to change it the openMSX base directory
> 	/opt/openMSX
> 	~/.openMSX
> All other paths are relative to these 2 base directories.
> These paths are coded in one single place in the source tree
> 	src/file/FileContext.cc:105

The "configure" script offers the "--prefix" option for setting the base 
directory for installation. It would be nice if we could use this and set the 
default to "/opt".

I guess packagers will build to an empty directory and create their RPM/DEB 
from there, not from their system directories. So the feature to change the 
base directory for installation is aimed at people compiling openMSX from 
source, either manually or using a source-based OS like FreeBSD or Gentoo 
Linux.

I don't think we really need more than one base, most people will be satisfied 
if they can choose "/opt", "/usr" or "/usr/local". However, "configure" 
offers customisation of the different directories (--bindir, --datadir, 
--sysconfdir); if it is not too much trouble supporting this would be nice. 
Otherwise we should find some way of removing these features from "configure 
--help", because suggesting they are available when they are not is very 
confusing.

Talking about auto*, the "-lSDL_image" workaround is still there. This should 
be solved some time, either by correcting the auto* files or by moving to our 
own build system.

Bye,
		Maarten