Packages this fork does not keep

The device serves a fixed list of systems, and the emulator picked for each one is the table in the README's "One emulator per system". Everything below was removed because it served a system that is not on that list, duplicated the default emulator, or supported a runtime the device no longer uses.

This was .upstream-ignore, the list of packages the upstream import tool was told never to bring back. Neither survives: the fork does not track upstream and nothing can restore these. The reasons are what is worth keeping, because they answer "why don't we ship X?".

Two entries on that list were wrong at the time: nestopia-lr and beetle-saturn-lr were both in the tree and both shipped, for NES and Saturn. Both have since been replaced, and have their rows below.

documentation/PACKAGE_INVENTORY.md covers the separate question of what was trimmed out of the image, with sizes.

Emulators and cores, with a reason of their own

Removed	Why
uae4arm-lr	Amiga core we do not use; puae covers it.
aethersx2-sa	EOL PS2 appimage. armsx2 is the only PS2 emulator this fork ships.
armsx2-sa	ARMSX2's SDL frontend. Its libretro core, armsx2-lr, replaced it, so PS2 runs in RetroArch like every other system.
cemu-sa	Wii U emulator with no usable 4:3 mode on a 4:3 panel. Removed, and the wiiu system with it.
drastic-sa	A closed-source Nintendo DS binary.
daedalusx64-sa	A 32-bit-only N64 emulator we never built.
bigpemu-sa	A Jaguar emulator behind retroarch's own.
touchhle-sa	An iOS app emulator.
vita3k-sa	PS Vita is 960x544, exactly 16:9, so it letterboxes on this panel the way psp does. Removed with its system.
bsnes-lr	Replaced Snes9x for the SNES in #520 for its accuracy, with patches for the exact NTSC rate, the DSP's 32040 Hz and accurate defaults. A tester measured the cost: severe frame drops in Yoshi's Island's intro with one run-ahead frame, and the battery going with it, for an accuracy difference nobody noticed in play. Snes9x is back with its exact-rate patch; sufami stays gone.
beetle-saturn-lr	Replaced for the Saturn by ymir-lr: Ymir is more accurate, and it runs the VDPs and the SCSP on their own threads where Beetle Saturn ran the console on one, which on this device was the difference a tester saw in Grandia. Ymir is also the one Saturn emulator with a GPU renderer in the making.
nestopia-lr	Replaced for NES, Famicom and FDS by mesence-lr, the nesdev community's Mesen. It is more accurate, and the NES is cheap enough that the accuracy costs nothing that matters here.
gpsp-lr	Unused alternative to mgba-lr. GBA, GBA Hacks and GBA Video all use mGBA.
skyemu-sa, nanoboyadvance-sa, hatarisa	Alternatives nobody defaulted to, all covered by the retroarch core that was already the default. skyemu also remains as skyemu-lr.
sndio	The only thing that pulled it in was touchhle-sa.
vlc	Only emulationstation ever linked it, and that is libmpv now.

Systems this fork does not keep

Standalone emulators (11):

amiberry azahar-sa gzdoom-sa heroic hypseus-singe melonds-sa minivmacsa openbor pico-8 supermodel-sa yabasanshiro-sa

Libretro cores (78):

81-lr a5200-lr arduous-lr atari800-lr b2-lr beetle-lynx-lr beetle-ngp-lr beetle-pce-fast-lr beetle-pce-lr beetle-pcfx-lr beetle-supergrafx-lr beetle-vb-lr beetle-wswan-lr bk-lr bluemsx-lr boom3-lr cap32-lr crocods-lr daphne-lr desmume-lr dosbox-core-lr dosbox-pure-lr easyrpg-lr ecwolf-lr emuscv-lr fake08-lr fceumm-lr fmsx-lr freechaf-lr freeintv-lr fuse-lr gearcoleco-lr geargrafx-lr gearlynx-lr gw-lr handy-lr hatari-lr idtech-lr jaxe-lr kronos-lr mame2003-lr melonds-ds-lr melonds-lr mesen-lr minivmac-lr mojozork-lr mu-lr np2kai-lr o2em-lr opera-lr panda3ds-lr play-lr pokemini-lr potator-lr prboom-lr prosystem-lr puae-lr puae2021-lr px68k-lr quasi88-lr quicknes-lr race-lr same_cdi-lr sameduck-lr stella-lr theodore-lr tic80-lr tyrquake-lr uzem-lr vecx-lr vice-lr vircon32-lr virtualjaguar-lr vitaquake2-lr vitaquake3-lr wasm4-lr xmil-lr yabasanshiro-lr

Scripts

Removed	Why
rocknix-fake-suspend	The state machine for devices without working suspend. The Nova suspends for real and its power key is owned by the SM8550 power-handler.

Tools

Removed	Why
gamepadcalibration	GPcal, stick and trigger calibration in Python drawn with pyxel, under Tools. The one stick problem found on the Nova was the MCU's deadband, not calibration, and a calibration tool would be a launcher screen writing the same rsinput parameters. One saved before still applies at boot from /storage/.config/autostart/GPcal.sh.
pyxel	GPcal's UI library, and GPcal its only user. Its upstream (github.com/kitao) disappeared on 2026-10-09 and took the wheel's URL with it.

Unused package recipes

These 30 recipes, plus gpsp-lr above, were removed from packages/ with their patches and support files. None was selected by either the official or unofficial SM8550 build, including the CI LLVM builds and source-unpack dependencies. Removing them leaves both build plans unchanged.

Removed	Why
mako-notify, mako-osd	Require a Wayland compositor; they cannot draw over the launcher's or an emulator's direct KMS output.
bemenu, fcft, foot, sway, swaybg, tllist, waylandpp, wl, wlr-randr, wlroots	The former Sway desktop and its unused dependencies. Gamescope keeps its Wayland dependencies and bundled wlroots.
at-spi2-atk, at-spi2-core, atk, gdk-pixbuf, gtk2, gtk3, mesa-demos, wxwidgets	Unused GTK frontends, libraries and demos.
common-shaders, glsl-shaders, retroarch-overlays, retropie-shaders	Already excluded from the image; RetroArch uses the retained slang-shaders package.
batteryplus, btop, entware, texturecache.py, wait-time-sync	Legacy tools with no build-plan users.
vulkan-wsi-layer	Unused Vulkan WSI layer; Mesa supplies the device's Vulkan drivers.