[FS-UAE] Runtime disk swapping

[RealNC]

I know that a built-in disk image browser is planned. But this won't help front-ends. For example, if I wanted to write a front-end that looks like WinUAE, some kind of IPC would be needed so that disk changes (and perhaps other settings) can be communicated to the running FS-UAE process.

I suppose even a simple stdin pipe would do, in case real IPC is deemed too much work due to all the different platforms supported. For example I could write "floppy_drive_0 = some_adf_file" to the pipe, and FS-UAE would pick it up. Perhaps the interface should understand all the settings supported in .fs-uae config files.

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by RealNC

I know that a built-in disk image browser is planned. But this won't help front-ends. For example, if I wanted to write a front-end that looks like WinUAE, some kind of IPC would be needed so that disk changes (and perhaps other settings) can be communicated to the running FS-UAE process.

I suppose even a simple stdin pipe would do, in case real IPC is deemed too much work due to all the different platforms supported. For example I could write "floppy_drive_0 = some_adf_file" to the pipe, and FS-UAE would pick it up. Perhaps the interface should understand all the settings supported in .fs-uae config files.

I wouldn't be difficult to make a programmatic remote control interface for FS-UAE, but it would require some work of course, and additional work to support additional settings.

Unix sockets can be used on Linux/Mac, and named pipes can be used similarly on Windows. Using bsdsockets (listening on 127.0.0.1) would be one possibility to get the same IPC mechanism on all platforms.

But no existing programs require such functionality (yet), and I don't need it myself - so I for my part lack the motivation to work on this...

[RealNC]

Do you plain on putting up a Git repo (like on GitHub or similar) so that people like me can hack around in forks and then try to submit for merge? :-)

[Toni Wilen]

uae-configuration format can be easily used for this purpose.

(WinUAE already has kind of IPC that uses same format, I did it just for fun long time ago, I assume no one uses it)

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

uae-configuration format can be easily used for this purpose.

(WinUAE already has kind of IPC that uses same format, I did it just for fun long time ago, I assume no one uses it)

Yes, it would make sense to use the same format, and most uae options could be passed directly through to the UAE core -for instance floppy drive options, Amiga hardware options.

But some FS-UAE features are handled completely outside the UAE core, like input and display options -so these would need special treatment by the IPC server (if needed).