It would be very productive for the developers (and even for users) if there was a complete N900 emulator. The standard SDK is fine for development, but it could be better if real ARM code could be run on it.
The idea is to make it possible to do a few things:
1) Test new software on it *without* the risk of thrashing the real N900 device;
2) Instead of warning users not to install software from extra-devel or extra-testing we could warn them to first test that software in the emulator and, why not, give some feedback;
2) Have a development environment that doesn't require the real device for testing and debugging;
3) One developer could configure the SDK + emulator on his home sytem, office and notebook. Then he/her could use git or mercurial to synchronize it all and be able to code wherever and whenever there is available time without the need to depend on the real device;
4) A larger group could contribute to porting and developing apps for the N900 device if only they could use the emulator without having to buy one real device. For instance: an upstream maintainer of some package could agree to accept some patches and even test them on the emulator.
Discussion thread:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=488603#post488603
Please, use the discussion thread to post your comments. If you don't care about this brainstorm, don't vote NO, just leave it alone. If you would like to have it, vote YES. Vote NO only if you think this could in some way decrease or make the N900 environment worse than it is now, but make sure you explain it
