Home Page Forums MAME Non-Windows MAME Support A stupid question

I have a stupid question, and I feel stupid for having to ask it...

For a few years now, I've been using the last version of MAME Tunes to generate an XML ROM List to use with CMP.

Earlier this month, I decided to take the plunge, and upgrade to Mac OSX 10.15.x, and have subsequently lost the ability to run MAME Tunes.

With QMC2 on indefinite hold (Get well soon René!), I've started using MAME's built-in front end (Which is impressive in it's own right), but I've yet to figure out how to generate an XML ROM List, how to get to the command line, or what the actual command is to generate the file if I were to get to the command line.

With the imminent release of 0.218, would someone be willing to take pity on an old, clueless user, and walk me through the procedure?

Have you tried OpenEmu as a front-end?

It doesn't provide all the bells and whistles as others but it certainly looks great and supports the latest macOS versions. In fact there has been an update today and this version is also up-to-date to MAME 0.217.

Yeah, that's RetroArch, the guys who assemble a bunch of emulators they didn't write and collect thousands of dollars a month for it.

We're not fans.

Well, I do not claim to know the internals, but AFAIK RetroArch is completely different : GUI-wise RetroArch is more or less a PlayStation clone, RetroArch is cross-platform while OpenEmu is macOS only. OpenEmu is on GitHub. It's a front-end for a bunch of open source stand-alone emulators.

Again, I don't claim any knowledge, but it's the first time I hear OpenEmu and RetroArch being related.

RetroArch is both a core (also called libRetro) and a frontend. The reference frontend is the Sony XMB looking thing (although that's changing). OpenEmu is simply a different frontend for libRetro.

If I might steer this thread back to my original question (I'll have questions about front end options soon enough...)

What is the command line procedure (via Terminal, in OSX 10.15.x) to generate an XML ROM List file for use with CMP?

./mame64 -listxml >romlist.xml will do it.

Thank you. I knew it was something ridiculously simple like that, but I just couldn't remember the proper command structure.

I'm still using QMC2 on my iMac running 10.15.3 without any problems.

Well then...

I just tried rerunning QMC2 (First time since updating to 10.15.x), and it worked!

That's two things that have gone well this week...