MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Automated custom build installer/optimizer?

>> OTOH, you add complexity during the 'installation', which is probably one of the nicest point of MAME with its simple extract-and-play solution
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I was still under impression of that previous thread, I don't really mean to suggest this anymore as a replacement for standard distribution, just as a tool. So, instead of having source and compiler zipped in the binary, this can be done with just a simple console script that comes with several predefined "tiny.mak" files relating to each games category, or something like that.

There are probably people out there that already have these .mak files written to exclude pinball, mech and mahjong games, but even if not that should be fairly easy to do and so this is practically already implemented, just needs a little bit of automation.

>> you don't get any advantage: no speedup in emulation (no additional component slow down the rest of emulation) and no reduction in RAM usage (only the component needed by emulation are loaded into memory)
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It would saved me a lot of time on lots of occasions, but I really need it because I'm working on mobile platforms, so cutting the size of the binary pays off in shorter downloads and quicker start up times. Smaller footprint also makes it easier for OS to switch in and out of the application and free up memory on exit. Nothing critical, just a good practice in embedded programming.

Are you sure about RAM usage, can you guarantee it for all hardware platforms and processor architectures? I guess if the RAM usage is controlled well then indeed there should not be any differences in the emulation speed, but there are so many unknowns that I would never make such statement unless I first spent few weeks researching the subject, which I never did, so I'll take your word for it.

To summarize, it's about cutting binary size and compile times, which may be useful to developers for testing and to users who wanna get rid of mechanical, pinball and/or mahjong games for whatever reasons they wish to do so.