> Actually I think it's still a quick scan at the moment and no real need to multiple > run mess for each and any system to get the software list.
you don't need multiple runs: with "mess -listsoftware" you get an xml with *all* software lists at once [1], and without repetitions (e.g. genesis and megadrive and their clones share the same list, but this list appears only once)
hypothetical usage sample: each entry from the -listsoftware output could appear in a selectable menu generated by clrmame and users might select which lists they want to scan/rebuild and which not... and then the selected entries could be run in a batch process as if separate xmls.
the tricky part would be (imho) to match the lists in the -listsoftware output with the proper drivers, to offer advanced management options... but this is an 'advanced' option, so we can ignore it at this stage
[1] except the ones not hooked up to the emulator... those have to be fed manually because they are invisible to the exe...