[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: RFS: snes9x



Hello, I am the second co-maintainer of zsnes :)
Let me add the following to what Eshat said :

> ZSNES is fine, fast and highly stable. I happily used it for years. It'd
> be perfectly acceptable, except for the fact that it uses i386 assembly
> and therefore isn't portable. Though I've heard rumors of people being
> able to cross-compile ZSNES with 32-bit libraries, I never had any
> success, which is how I came about using snes9x a couple years ago.

zsnes is now available for amd64 too, but you are right that a
non-intel port is impossible.

> Although I am a native English speaker, so I have no experience, ZSNES
> has no translations that I can see, whereas the GTK version of snes9x
> has five translations.

Good call. I haven't checked how difficult it could be, but i18n can
be a goal for a future release.

> I feel that the GTK interface is nicer than the DOS-esque one of ZSNES,
> but I'll admit that's a personal preference.

zsnes has an old fashioned GUI which is part of its charm (like
scummvm's), but may look "rough" for users. A GTK frontend is
definitely a good idea, I don't know if any of these are maintained :

http://www.zophar.net/frontends/snes.html

But let's go back to snes9x :)

What concerns me more is the fact that it comes with a non-free
license. However, this is the main alternative for non-intel users
(bsnes has a different audience, I believe, as it focus more on
precision than performance), and it provides netplay support
(impossible in zsnes ATM), so I am in favour of its inclusion.

I can't sponsor your package as I am not a DD, but I had a look at it.

  - As the debexpo page shows, it has several lintian warnings :

    http://mentors.debian.net/package/snes9x

    I: snes9x source: quilt-patch-missing-description fix-typo.patch
    W: snes9x source: out-of-date-standards-version 3.8.4 (current is 3.9.2)
    I: snes9x-x: possible-documentation-but-no-doc-base-registration
    W: snes9x-gtk: binary-without-manpage usr/games/snes9x-gtk

  - the package builds cleanly in a sid chroot, but dpkg-shlibdeps
    complains about useless shared libraries. The usual fix is to use
    --as-needed at the linker phase, but it is not mandatory (if you
    plan to port your package to Ubuntu, I think it is the case).

  - debian/control : I belive that snes9x-gtk should depend on
    snes9x-x as it is unusable without it.

  - debian/changelog : you should close the wnpp bug under the "New
    maintainer" entry.

  - debian/rules : the override_dh_install target may be replaced with
    an entry in snes9x-x.install

Have a nice day !

-- 
Etienne Millon


Reply to: