Is it possible to package an Atari .atr file into a Windows .exe file?

[gozar]

Indeed there are legal ramifications. If you wanted to bundle an Atari program into an EXE of an emulator that's distributed under the GNU GPL, such as Altirra or Atari800, then you would be legally obliged to provide that Atari program's source code to each recipient of that bundle. And the source code would have to be licenced under the GPL as well.

I doubt that the Atari code would have to be licensed GPL just because the emulator is GPL.

 

 

 

 

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[Joey Z]

I doubt that the Atari code would have to be licensed GPL just because the emulator is GPL.

 

 

 

 

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this is an interesting issue actually. At a bare minimum, you would have to provide the source for the emulator, if it was under the GPL, and the binary for the game, as that is required to compile into the executable which was distributed. Whether or not you need to provide the source for the game too, is a different question. This may come up in the differences between the GPL and the LGPL. Could the atari game be considered as 'linking' to the emulator?

[russg]

Hello Everyone,

 

I have a simple question that currently may not have a simple answer. Is it possible to package an Atari .atr file into a Windows .exe file? If there is no simple answer, is there a way to do this at all?

 

PS. The same question applies to all the other common Atari file formats as well such as .xex, .com, etc.

 

Thanks.

 

You can make a windows .bat file that would run altirra. You would have to put the .ATR you want in the 'disk drive' of altira before you make the batch file.

In other words, you can make a MS DOS batch text file, named 'myaltirra.bat' or anything .bat using notepad.

You get the notepad application by searching for it. search for 'notepad'. Then you type in your MSDOS command, like 'cd/users/myname/desktop/altirra in one line then 'altirra64.exe' in the next line, both lines with RETURNs.

You save your .bat file as a text file 'myalt.txt'. Then you have to get a DOS prompt as Administrator (Windows won't let you name a file with a .bat extension unless you are Administrator.)

at DOS prompt type 'copy myalt.txt myalt.bat'.

Now you can go to DOS prompt and type 'myalt' and it will execute Altirra the same as if you entered Altirra.

This seems not to be such a great idea. It is same as entering Altirra.

'I tried to delete this.'

Edited July 10, 2016 by russg

[phaeron]

this is an interesting issue actually. At a bare minimum, you would have to provide the source for the emulator, if it was under the GPL, and the binary for the game, as that is required to compile into the executable which was distributed. Whether or not you need to provide the source for the game too, is a different question. This may come up in the differences between the GPL and the LGPL. Could the atari game be considered as 'linking' to the emulator?

 

In my opinion, yes.

 

The GPL's viral nature revolves around the idea of a modified (derivative) work created when a GPL'd work is combined with another work. Static linking is pretty much always considered to do this, and dynamic linking (DLLs) has been counted as creating a derivative work too when the DLL and EXE aren't reasonably independent. You would have a hard time justifying this when the Atari program is actually put inside the GPL'd executable to make a unified run-and-go program. Anyone looking at the result would call it one program, not two. That's kind of the point, after all.

 

As for whether the Atari program could be distributed as a binary for source -- you're required to provide the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." That means the original assembly, BASIC, Action!, etc. source code for the Atari program, too. The only way the binary satisfies this is if you punched in the instruction opcode bytes directly... which actually does happen occasionally, but not for most reasonably sized programs.

 

If you just package the emulator with the Atari program in a .zip file or installer, that falls under "mere aggregation" instead and the GPL doesn't apply to the Atari program. You do still need to make the source available for the emulator, which is often forgotten.

[gozar]

 

 

If you just package the emulator with the Atari program in a .zip file or installer, that falls under "mere aggregation" instead and the GPL doesn't apply to the Atari program. You do still need to make the source available for the emulator, which is often forgotten.

Under OS X, applications are folders, which means OS X (and probably the new Snappy apps for Linux) could easily be distributed in this manner.

 

Then, with Windows you could use an installer to install the emulator and put the Atari program where it needs to be and not have to GPL the Atari program either.

 

You still have the issue of the OS. I don't know if you could get away with distributing the xformer.zip with the installer or in the app folder.

 

 

 

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