About RC3 space-efficiency

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About RC3 space-efficiency

Post by Wanderer »

Done some test with mame 0.125. I created a new database, added/removed paths and in general did several things. After a while, i started wondering whether it had meaning to compress (zip) the database file like in RC2. I did some tests and the results were interesting.

Original file: ~79MB
ziped: ~19MB (7zip's zip mode - about 20 secs to finish)
7zipped: ~12MB (about 50 secs to finish)
For comparison purposes: RC2 datafile is 11MB uncompressed and 1MB compressed.

After those results, i'm thinking that perhaps RC3 should have database compression as an option. I guess in faster PCs, things will be better than what my tests have shown but even with that, 20-25 secs is not that much in order to save 50MBs for those who need them. I also guess that this may be in Eric's todo list but i just wanted to remind it.

Another thing i noticed. After i played a little and i noticed the DB had become larger than 120 MB, i used the great "clean database" tool. In order for this tool to work, 2 temporary files are created under %romcenterdata%\tools, old.fbk and old.rdt. However, after the process is completed, these files are not deleted. In my case, those two were an additional 120MBs. Shall we assume that in the final RC version those will be deleted?

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Re: About RC3 space-efficiency

Post by RomCenter »

Wanderer wrote:After those results, i'm thinking that perhaps RC3 should have database compression as an option. I guess in faster PCs, things will be better than what my tests have shown but even with that, 20-25 secs is not that much in order to save 50MBs for those who need them. I also guess that this may be in Eric's todo list but i just wanted to remind it.
It is not in my todo list. I think people today don't care if they 'loose' 50 MB. Min hard drive is now > 100Go. A 'clean database' already reduce the db size.
And Database needs to be uncompressed during rc operations. It means It must be recompressed when you leave rc or change database.
Wanderer wrote:Another thing i noticed. After i played a little and i noticed the DB had become larger than 120 MB, i used the great "clean database" tool. In order for this tool to work, 2 temporary files are created under %romcenterdata%\tools, old.fbk and old.rdt. However, after the process is completed, these files are not deleted. In my case, those two were an additional 120MBs. Shall we assume that in the final RC version those will be deleted?
Yes, I keep them for backup during tests. I will delete them in final version.
Eric - RomCenter developer
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