D054 - The emulators live outside the repository, read for facts

Status: decided Date: 2026-09-26

Emulator binaries and source checkouts live in <emulators>, outside the repository, and the run scripts default there. They are read for facts - what a format is, what a symbol is called - and none of their code enters this repository.

Why: hundreds of megabytes of third-party material has no place in the probe's history, and several of the projects are GPL. The probe calls the platform's own interface and needs no emulator code.

Rejected: vendoring the checkouts - bloats history and imports licences. A transient scratch location - loses the toolkit.