Repository

AstralEmu Packages

Optimized emulator packages for AstralEmu, rebuilt daily from source with performance flags and architecture-specific compilation.

This repository serves packages through APT, DNF, and Pacman — matching whichever base distro your AstralEmu image uses. The repo is hosted via GitHub Pages at https://astralemu.github.io/astralemu-packages/.

What's included

Emulators (standalone)

Every major standalone emulator is packaged and rebuilt daily. Examples include RetroArch, PPSSPP, Dolphin, PCSX2, Duckstation, Azahar, Ryujinx, Eden, RPCS3, AetherSX2, and more — the full list depends on what's supported on your target architecture.

RetroArch Cores

All RetroArch cores are built individually as separate packages, so you only install what you need.

Hardware Dependencies

Device-specific packages that provide kernel modules, firmware, and drivers required by embedded targets (RK3588, Snapdragon, Amlogic, etc.).

Custom kernels

Four kernel flavors covering every supported handheld, with BORE scheduler + CachyOS portable patches + per-SoC downstream cherry-picks (ROCKNIX) where relevant:

The build is split into 5 sub-jobs (prep → image + modules-soc/platform + modules-generic → aggregator) for the three modern kernels so that no single job comes near the GitHub Actions 6h ceiling. The Switch is a mono-job since the 4.9 tree builds in roughly an hour. A per-device meta-package kernel-astralemu-<device> pulls in the right kernel flavor + modules + dtbs (ARM only) + setperf + repo config in a single command.

Performance Profiles

Per-device packages that contain the dynamic tuning rules for the Performance Manager — CPU/GPU/RAM governors, clocks, and pinning configs for every supported emulator.

Build optimizations

Every package is compiled with:

Builds run on GitHub Actions and are triggered automatically every 24 hours, or on-demand when a new emulator release is tagged upstream.

Repository setup

Each device has its own repository for emulator packages, plus a shared repository for dependencies grouped by source distribution. Replace <device> with your device ID (e.g. l4t) and <source_distro> with the source distribution (e.g. ubuntu-lts).

The astralemu-deps-repo meta-package (included in the device repo) automatically configures the shared dependency repository.

APT (Ubuntu / Debian)

curl -fsSL https://astralemu.github.io/astralemu-packages/apt/device/<device>/astralemu.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/astralemu.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/astralemu.gpg] https://astralemu.github.io/astralemu-packages/apt/device/<device> $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/astralemu.list
sudo apt update

DNF (Universal Blue / Fedora)

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://astralemu.github.io/astralemu-packages/dnf/device/<device>/astralemu-<device>.repo

Pacman (Arch Linux)

Add to /etc/pacman.conf:

[astralemu]
SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
Server = https://astralemu.github.io/astralemu-packages/pacman/device/<device>/$arch

Available devices

The full list lives in devices.yml. All devices currently share ubuntu-lts as their source distro — a rolling alias that always points to the latest Ubuntu LTS via the ubuntu:latest Docker base image. Pick the entry that best matches your hardware — generic baselines (x86-v3, armv8-2, …) are a fine fallback when your exact handheld isn't named yet.

ARM handhelds:

AMD/Intel handhelds:

Hosting

This repo has its own GitHub Pages enabled. The built packages and repo metadata are served as static files from the gh-pages branch:

https://astralemu.github.io/astralemu-packages/
├── apt/device/<device>/pool/<distro>/       # emulator packages
├── apt/device/<device>/dists/<distro>/
├── apt/deps/<source_distro>/pool/<distro>/  # shared dependencies
├── apt/deps/<source_distro>/dists/<distro>/
├── dnf/device/<device>/<version>/<arch>/
├── dnf/deps/<source_distro>/<version>/<arch>/
├── pacman/device/<device>/<arch>/
└── pacman/deps/<source_distro>/<arch>/

The CI pipeline builds the packages on main, then pushes the repo metadata and package files to gh-pages for serving.

Build matrix

The CI dynamically generates the build matrix from two config files:

• devices.yml — Target devices with architecture, compiler flags, and package sources to mirror
• distros.yml — Target distributions (APT, DNF, Pacman) with their versions and mirrors

Every package is cross-built to all target formats (.deb, .rpm, Pacman) with automatic dependency resolution. Dependencies missing or incompatible on the target distro are fetched from the source distribution, prefixed with its source-distro id (e.g. ubuntu-lts-libfoo), and published to a shared dependency repository. Devices with the same source distribution share the same dependencies.

Credits

This repository builds and mirrors a lot of other people's work — the Linux kernel, the BORE scheduler, CachyOS portable + handheld patches, ROCKNIX's per-SoC downstream patch series, NaGaa95's Switch 4.9 fork, every emulator and libretro core listed above, the perf-libs stack (Mesa, Vulkan-Loader, FFmpeg, jemalloc, SDL3, …) and theofficialgman/l4t-debs. The full list with upstream URLs and license notes lives in CREDITS.md. If you find a missing or incorrect attribution, open an issue.

Main Repo • Documentation • Community