Setting the current directory to a subdirectory of $HOME

[Removed by request]

I'm using Ubuntu 18.10 dev with mame 0.188+dfsg.1-0ubuntu2 and I noticed that MAME defines several directories in its ui.ini to be located in the current directory (which is the users home) and some of them like history are also automatically created if MAME is running. To not bloat up the users home directory it might make sense if mame.desktop would set the current directory to $HOME/.mame or $HOME/mame to avoid this issue.

[Christian Pernegger (fallenguru)]

This is still an issue in the version in 22.04, currently 0.242+dfsg.1-1.

MAME as packaged assumes the current working directory, which may or may not be $HOME, to be its root directory = for its own exclusive use. It will look for stuff there, and, worse, create files and directories there. Start it from somewhere else next time, and it will start from scratch, as far as all the paths that are defined relatively are concerned.

Result: clutter, confusion, even potential data loss (if it overwrites something).

This is by upstream design, see https://docs.mamedev.org/commandline/commandline-all.html#file-names-and-directory-paths. Short version: Windows cds to the exe's directory on launch anyway, MacOS (and presumably Linux) users have to cd manually first ...

Problem is, it's not expected behaviour for an installed Debian package at all.

Please compile MAME to interpret all relative paths relative to $HOME/mame by default.

Additionally, the shipped /etc/mame/mame.ini should set "homepath" [default: "."] and "swpath" [default: "software", meaning "./software"] as well.