aranym text console

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

Hi Petr,

I talked to Joey Hess, who's set up a d-i testlab to run test installs
for various Debian architectures, to look into setting up aranym as one
of the used emulators so that we could have automated m68k test
installations.

Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen with the current state of
affairs, since it's impossible to get some sort of text output from the
console to a program outside of the emulator; I don't see any support
for serial lines, nor do I see the ability to disable the framebuffer
(although I imagine that the last problem is merely a restriction of the
platform).

Would it be possible to add in support for a serial line? Ideally this
would work similar to qemu's way of doing this, where you can have the
emulator allocate a PTY to which serial input and output are then
redirected. If things were arranged this way, the testlab framework
wouldn't need much extra work for aranym to be used.

Additionally, it would also be nice if the sdl usage could be disabled
with a simple command line switch, or so. Currently you have to have an
X server available, which isn't desirable for this type of usage.

Thanks,

-- 
Shaw's Principle:
	Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
	want to use it.