I've noticed that ClrMame Pro preserves attributes from the source sets during rebuilds. i.e. the archive, hidden, read only and system flags.

As a general rule I suppose this is the safest approach to take. However, I would like to see an option to set those flags to a default value. After all, with roms they don't ever have to be system or hidden or anything anyway.

I know it sounds a bit pedantic but I believe it is no more esoteric than the time stamping options currently in the system and would help produce cleaner, more consistent romsets.

The reason I ask is that I find myself spending some time cleaning dodgey attrib options out of my romsets. The 3 most common options I see in roms are 'nothing', +a or +r.

Cheers,
Tim

> The reason I ask is that I find myself spending some time cleaning dodgey attrib
> options out of my romsets. The 3 most common options I see in roms are
> 'nothing', +a or +r.

personally I like to have all my roms with no attributes, so when cmpro does its job i have all the changed zips marked with +a. which is the real use of such attribute, btw ^_^ and then i use that attribute to separate the roms, recompress them with zipmax, make a backup, copy for some friend, whatever. then when i don't want to do anything else, i set -a to every zip again.

Pi - Every Precious Dream and Vision Underneath the Stars
Arcade news, emulator archives and gamelists at CAESAR

That's brilliant. I sorted my roms by date and ZipMaxed them by selecting so many and sending to ZipMax. I then wrote down the newest date / time and continued on from there.

> > The reason I ask is that I find myself spending some time cleaning dodgey
> attrib
> > options out of my romsets. The 3 most common options I see in roms are
> > 'nothing', +a or +r.
>
> personally I like to have all my roms with no attributes, so when cmpro does its
> job i have all the changed zips marked with +a. which is the real use of such
> attribute, btw ^_^ and then i use that attribute to separate the roms,
> recompress them with zipmax, make a backup, copy for some friend, whatever. then
> when i don't want to do anything else, i set -a to every zip again.
>
> Pi - Every Precious Dream and Vision Underneath the Stars
> Arcade news, emulator archives and gamelists at CAESAR
>

> That's brilliant. I sorted my roms by date and ZipMaxed them by selecting so
> many and sending to ZipMax. I then wrote down the newest date / time and
> continued on from there.

Exactly what I did before realizing there are better ways to do it ^_^ But you have to be careful about something: when you move roms from one folder to another, then the A attribute is set. And ZipMax sets it when it changes the zip, doesn't set it when it doesn't change it (due to an error or for being unable of improving the compressed size).

About fixing attributes like R, S & H, just do a bat which does it for you:

attrib -r -s -h c:\allmyroms /S /D

The /D parameter also processes folders, so folders don't have R attribute either.

Let's see if Roman thinks that fixing RS&H could be also task for CMP. I wouldn't mind it either ;)

Pi - Every Precious Dream and Vision Underneath the Stars
Arcade news, emulator archives and gamelists at CAESAR

> I've noticed that ClrMame Pro preserves attributes from the source sets during
> rebuilds. i.e. the archive, hidden, read only and system flags.


No...it only does that if settings->preserve archive/file date/time is enabled.
I usually turn them off (they are enabled by default). Because I can then see which sets have changed.

Roman Scherzer
ClrMamePro

> > I've noticed that ClrMame Pro preserves attributes from the source sets during
> > rebuilds. i.e. the archive, hidden, read only and system flags.
>
>
> No...it only does that if settings->preserve archive/file date/time is enabled.
> I usually turn them off (they are enabled by default). Because I can then see
> which sets have changed.

I've turned them off and the problem still occurs. Hidden, system and read only flags are preserved from the original source. The date time flags are altered or not depending on those settings. You can test it yourself, take a romset with a few roms in it and make one read only, one system, one hidden. Now rebuild that rom, the target rom has the same attributes.

Thanks,
Tim

> > > I've noticed that ClrMame Pro preserves attributes from the source sets
> during
> > > rebuilds. i.e. the archive, hidden, read only and system flags.
> >
> >
> > No...it only does that if settings->preserve archive/file date/time is
> enabled.
> > I usually turn them off (they are enabled by default). Because I can then see
> > which sets have changed.
>
> I've turned them off and the problem still occurs. Hidden, system and read only
> flags are preserved from the original source. The date time flags are altered or
> not depending on those settings. You can test it yourself, take a romset with a
> few roms in it and make one read only, one system, one hidden. Now rebuild that
> rom, the target rom has the same attributes.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>


The reason for this is the unzip operation. The unzip operation unzips the files with their set date/time/attributes. A normal copy operation of files (e.g. when you rebuild not-zipped files) updates the date/time/attributs.

So when the files were +h in the zipfile, they will be +h in the new archive even when preseve date/time is disabled.

I will rethink if I change the unzip behaviour.

Roman Scherzer
ClrMamePro