LinuxQuestions.org - Python script to clean clones out of a MAME romset

Here's a Python script to remove clones from a MAME romset. Not always advisable, but if you want to, here's how you do it. Personally, my use case was to build a split FBNEO romset with clrmamepro, remove clones from that, and then build a RetroArch playlist.

It takes two parameters. The first is the output of "mame -listxml", redirected to a file. The second is the directory of ROMs that you want to clean. The output is a list of files to delete (which you for-loop or xargs over).

Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python3





import argparse

from lxml import etree

import pathlib



def main():

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser("romclean", description="Cleans an arcade romset")

    parser.add_argument("dat")

    parser.add_argument("romdir")

    args = parser.parse_args()



    killer = set()



    with open(args.dat) as f:

        mame = etree.parse(args.dat).getroot()

        for machine in mame:

            if machine.get("cloneof") is not None:

                continue

            if machine.get("ismechanical") == "yes":

                continue

            if machine.get("isbios") == "yes":

                continue

            if not machine.get("name"):

                continue

            killer.add(machine.get("name"))



    for rom in (x for x in pathlib.Path(args.romdir).iterdir() if x.is_file()):

        if rom.stem not in killer:

            print(rom.name)



if __name__ == '__main__':

    main()