Lewis Jardine wrote: <snip> > Emulators work perfectly correctly without software to emulate. NO$GMB > does the same thing with no image loaded that my gameboy does with no > cartridge in the slot. It has 'no significant functionality'.
> Pacifist (I assume) does the same thing with no > BIOS that a real Atari ST does if you pull out its BIOS chips*. > Many emulators are for systems that are well-documented (indeed, a Free > emulator is a good source of documentation in and of itself), and can be > used as a basis for developing one's own software, regardless of whether > Free software for the platform has yet been written, or packaged in > Debian. Well, if the emulator is suitable for that purpose, then certainly I would say that it doesn't depend on non-free software for that fucntionality, and therefore can go in main. (Of course, it should go in the 'dev' section if that's its primary function.) > In addition, emulator components can be used in writing ones own > emulator, perhaps to prototype some embedded system. That's not an 'end-user' use. > Back in the day, for many 8 and 16-bit era consoles and computers, the > preferred form for modification was the ROM image itself, or rather > rudimentary assembler (indeed, many spectrum games were written on > paper, and assembled by hand). Debian already provides a development > environment comparable to this. Well, if you have an emulator for such a system, then great, it belongs in 'main'. > The policy requires packages to list as a dependency other packages > which are necessary for it to operate correctly, not other packages that > are necessary for it to behave in manner entertaining to an end user. In > my opinion, an emulator bundled with a development environment depends > on nothing else to work correctly; for most systems emulated to date, > Debian provides an environment that can be used to develop software. > > The requirement to find/write and package an arbitrary Free program for Not package. Just find/write. > the platform strikes me as a ridiculous hurdle - either any program will > do, in which case a program so trivial that the end-user could knock one > up after reading the manual for a few minutes (a few bytes of assembler > to flash the screen, for instance) is sufficient, Um, I think "hello world" would be a bare minimum standard of usefulness. In the cases of some emulators, the most trivial programs such as that could *not* be knocked up after reading the manual for a few minutes. If it *can* be, then go ahead and put the emulator in 'main'. The trivial program would be a nice thing to put in the emulator package while you're at it. :-) > or the program must be > judged against some arbitrary criteria of usefulness, which is a > requirement no other type of program in Debian is held to. I think every program in Debian is held to the standard of being "useful". -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.