General mechanism for key-value handling in CMOS file

It’s time we had a mechanism for key-value pair handling in the CMOS file/EEPROM. This should be centralised. It needs to handle reads, writes and deletes.

But where should it be?

We also need ROOL to allocate keys so as to avoid clashes.

I suggest you look at the NVRAM module http://www.riscosopen.org/viewer/view/castle/RiscOS/Sources/HWSupport/NVRAM/ which was used to manage EEPROM memory (especially above the first 240 bytes) on NC and STB versions of RISC OS. It does more or less what you’re asking already.

As for your question about a centralised registration database, in my own self-interest, I’d rather not have to add any more to the list of things ROOL has to maintain! Besides, for the NVRAM module to work, the list of tags has to be public anyway, so all that’s necessary to avoid clashes is to search all the tags files in CVS to see if it’s already been used.