Dosbox-x: Can't generate dosbox.conf file [on Mac OS X]

[forthrin]

0.82.4 on macOS: Followed #126, but no dosbox.confis generated in the current directory, nor anywhere else in my file system. I assume "current directory" means $PWD when running dosbox-x.

[joncampbell123]

It has to be generated somewhere.

Mac OS X is funny about what PWD is when you run it as an app.

[emendelson]

Apologies if this is obvious. I haven't built DOSBox-X under MacOS yet, but have you looked in:

/Users/YOURNAME/Library/Preferences/DOSBox-x

or something similar?

EDIT: I tried to build in macOS, but got an error about X11, which I don't have installed. If it's possible to build in macOS without X11, I'll be grateful for any guidance. (There's a --without-x option for configure with SVN, but I don't see it in DOSBox-X.)

[joncampbell123]

@emendelson Try using the ./build-debug script to compile, which should disable any attempt to compile against X11

[emendelson]

Thank you - but I also finally noticed that you have a prebuilt copy available for download. When I launched it and tried config -wc, nothing got written, and an error message said that no configuration file was loaded.

EDIT: Yes, ./build-debug worked correctly, and the resulting build had the same issue with config -wc. Also, the Find Any File utility showed no conf file getting written.

[forthrin]

@emendelson: Nothing in ~/Library/Preferences/ or elsewhere. Even did find / -mtime -15m and find / -iname '*dosbox*'. However, DOSBox-X does read dosbox.conf if you manually copy it there:

cd
cp "Library/Preferences/DOSBox * Preferences" dosbox.conf
dosbox-x

[joncampbell123]

I just did a quick experiment.

I modded the main() function in DOSBox-X to print out argv[0] and the current working directory, then ran the compiled code as an app from the desktop.

Apparently, when a Mac OS X application is run from the desktop, the current working directory is "/".

So if you were root, DOSBox-X would have created a dosbox.conf at the root of your filesystem, but since you're not root, nothing was created.

[joncampbell123]

It should work as you expect however, if you bring up the Terminal application and run it from the terminal.

[joncampbell123]

I just pushed a commit that changes the working directory to your $HOME directory if the current working directory was the root of the filesystem.

So if DOSBox-X is run from the Finder by double-clicking the icon, it will read and write configuration from the root of your home directory, which is more useful than doing nothing from the fileystem root!

[brunocastello]

I just pushed a commit that changes the working directory to your $HOME directory if the current working directory was the root of the filesystem.

So if DOSBox-X is run from the Finder by double-clicking the icon, it will read and write configuration from the root of your home directory, which is more useful than doing nothing from the fileystem root!

I think that if they were in a folder in our home directory, would be great to use with Dropbox-like solutions. For example, I use symlinks in Dropbox to folders on my home directory, so when I go to my MacBook at work I have them, and when I am back at home on my "HackBook Pro" (just a friendly name for my Dell G7 running macOS) they are there too.

But, since now I use OneDrive, I have to have them on OneDrive folder. I might just put a symlink on my home directory to them. But my OCD freaks out when there are files cluttering my home directory...

[ghost]

I am still struggling with this and I am unable to find solution anywhere. I have created dosbox.conf everywhere - in the home root, in the same folder as dosbox-x, in the preferences folder, nothing works. Any idea?

[sdsnatcher]

@miroslavkoptik

What worked for me was to copy a sample dosbox.conf to my home folder, then boot dosbox-x. Only after this the conf -all -wc command started working fine.

It also works if you open a terminal and just type this:

touch ~/dosbox.conf