Comment 1 for bug 1792247

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.