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Uhh, if duplicate names are a problem, just prepend a system identifier to every set like MAME does with PC10 and MegaTech/MegaPlay. It can always be removed when ClrMAME is fixed.

so you first would create lists with all different names, then you would rewrite them all when clrmame is capable of supporting them better. i.e. you do the work twice to make easier the use of a rommanager? it's nonsense.

I think it is more productive for MESS to create lists in the best possible way, and simply say to the users: well, at the moment rommanagers still cannot do all the work for you. hence, if you really want to use our lists be patient and do some additional work. if you don't want, please keep using for a couple of versions the old generic loading commands and only use the -romident function of the lists when you want to report a bug so that we are sure you are not using a bad dump.

are you really suggesting people to keep 10 thousands of roms of 15 different systems in the same directory?

Yes, I would do that. The external tools require that at the moment. It's less nonsense than making me load 40 lists for 40 systems!

you only have to rename sets which conflict across systems, it's not an insane amount of work, sets get renamed in MAME all the time. MESS can prompt you of the set names if you're not sure sometimes, it works with the existing systems, it can be changed in the future when external support is better, everybody wins!

I'm proposing they have that option, and that when Roman improves ClrMAME they also have the option to move them to the system folders that were handily output in the xml, and everything 'just works'. Choice. (Just like right now I can put a CHD in a Zip if I really want, it's pointless in many cases, but I can do it, it works, there is minimal cost in supporting that, and it almost makes sense for sub 200meg CHDs)

No, I'm suggesting the following:

1) If users want to do that, they should be able to (even if in the final form that means that bublbobl.zip contains versions for 20 different systems)

2) You stated that ClrMAME and the core's inability to handle duplicate names was a blocking issue. I offered an easy, tested solution that could be applied and removed by automated tools.

frontends which supports MESS already support also computers: adding -flop or -cass followed by a filename is not more difficult than parsing mame.ini. the problem is that supporting softlist will require some work no matter which way you implement it: frontends which supported MESS will have to add the handling of the software list; frontends which never supported MESS will have to add the handling of system+software commands (because you will never launch "mess bublbobl" as in MAME, you will always need to specify the system to use...)

your argument does not work well...

True, they would need to add support for the extra commandline parameter, but it's significantly less work. They can extract the system name from the extra XML field, chuck it at the command-line and be done with it. Minimal extra coding needed. ClrMAME would 'just work', and could be improved to support multiple paths later.

Yup. ClrMAME might even eventually add a MESS-specific "supermerge" option that flattens like-named software across systems into a single zip.

okay, since I'm fine with the current code, and I'm neither capable of adding the kind of support you suggest nor to make frontend authors' life easier, I will simply sit and wait for cool things to happen.
when core improvements are in, I will check if the lists I work on are still fully compatible, and I will fix any possible regression.