Listing RGBDS in platforms' package managers

[Rangi42]

By now RGBDS is listed on enough platforms' package managers, with various maintainers and states of updatedness. When packages are well-maintained, whether by us or third parties, it may be appropriate to mention them at https://rgbds.gbdev.io/install.

• Linux:
  • apt (Debian, Ubuntu, etc): https://packages.debian.org/sid/rgbds
    • Maintained by @avivace and @robbi-blechdose (see https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/rgbds)
  • dnf (Fedora): https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/rgbds/rgbds/
    • Maintained by Benjamin Lowry (blowry)
    • [ ] Needs updating from 0.9.0! (see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2343435)
  • pacman (Arch): https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/rgbds/
    • Maintained by @alucryd
    • [ ] Needs updating from 0.9.4! ("Flagged out-of-date on 2025-11-19")
  • portage (Gentoo): https://gpo.zugaina.org/dev-util/rgbds
    • Maintained by @orbea
  • Flatpak (many):
    • [ ] Not yet listed! (see https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/building.html)
• Windows:
  • WinGet (first-party):
    • [ ] Not yet listed! (see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/package/)
  • Chocolatey (choco, third-party): https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/rgbds
    • In progress by @Rangi42 (see https://github.com/zemzelett/chocolatey-packages)
    • [ ] Needs updating from 0.5.2! (see #1675)
• macOS:
  • Homebrew (brew): https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/rgbds
    • Maintained automatically (see https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pulls?q=is%3Apr+rgbds)
  • MacPorts (port):
    • [ ] Not yet listed! (see https://guide.macports.org/#project.contributing)
• BSD:
  • pkg (FreeBSD): https://www.freshports.org/devel/rgbds
    • Maintained by @nunotexbsd

[Rangi42]

I wonder which package managers it's worth supporting. The goal would be to update all packages as simply as possible when we publish a new release, ideally fully automated by CI like our Docker container image is. We'd also want broad system support, e.g. more people use Homebrew than MacPorts.

[pinobatch]

To approximate which distributions might be interested in RGBDS, ask two questions:

1. Which distributions package WLA, cc65, SDCC, or other dev tools?
2. Which distributions package FCEUX (formerly FCE Ultra), an NES emulator? This gives an estimate as to which distributions would be interested in carrying SameBoy, a Game Boy emulator that has RGBDS as a build dependency.

Debian packages both cc65 and FCEUX. In the past (fourth quarter 2010), Fedora has declined to host emulators in its main repository to avoid the cost of defending a civil lawsuit alleging contributory infringement of Nintendo's copyright in its first-party games. See messages by Tom "spot" Calloway on Fedora's legal mailing list (part 1; part 2). The wording of this exclusion began to change in May 2016 (diff), though it isn't clear to me to what extent the spirit of the policy changed.

One thing to be careful of is that unless I'm missing something, well-known GNU/Linux distributions' package managers rarely provide a way to install RGBDS versions before and after a breaking change side-by-side. This means we should either A. be done with deprecating and removing things, or B. introduce something analogous to GCC -std= to select a version of the language.

[robbi-blechdose]

  * `apt` (Debian, Ubuntu, etc): See [Self hosted Debian repository #918](https://github.com/gbdev/rgbds/issues/918)
    
    * In progress by [@avivace](https://github.com/avivace) and [@robbi-blechdose](https://github.com/robbi-blechdose) (see https://github.com/ISSOtm/rgbds-deb)

Note that the packaging repository is now hosted at: https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/rgbds