chimera-gfx-Public/docs/retroarch/phase-1.0b-smoke-candidate-design.md

Phase 1.0B bounded RetroArch smoke candidate

Status: BUILT_WITH_DECLARED_RISKS; offline evidence only. Transfer, installation and execution are not authorized.

Scope

The candidate is the real RetroArch v1.22.2 frontend and runloop from the separate chimera-retroarch fork. It statically binds chimera_smokecore, uses the pinned PS5 SDL2 software framebuffer, and initializes VideoOut, one Pad device and stereo AudioOut. It requires neither content nor a configuration file. It is not a mini-frontend and contains no dynamic core. The permitted existing smokecore software image is selected, so RGUI/menu and their content browser are compiled out of this bounded variant.

The logical profile is ps5-software-rgui-smoke-bounded; the make selector is PS5_PROFILE=software-smoke, and the output label is retroarch_ps5_software_smoke.elf.

Compile-time closure

Enabled:

• real RetroArch frontend and runloop;
• static Chimera smokecore, 320 x 240 XRGB8888 at 60 fps;
• SDL2 software video with double-buffered PS5 VideoOut;
• one SDL2 PS5 Pad and 15% deadzone;
• SDL2 PS5 48 kHz stereo AudioOut;
• on-screen bounded status record;
• 60,000 ms and 3,600-frame shutdown gates;
• post-teardown process _Exit;
• VFS and link-time libc write firewalls.

Disabled or garbage-collected from the final ELF:

• dynamic cores, content browser data, playlists/history, databases;
• networking, updater, achievements and command interfaces;
• screenshots, recording, shaders, filters and compressed content;
• SRAM, savestates, remap/autoconfig/config persistence;
• keyboard, IME, mouse, sensor, haptic, rumble and lightbar paths;
• GNM, OpenGL, Vulkan, RetroArch dynamic-core/module loading, installation, autoload and retry.

SDL's dynamic API and runtime assertions are disabled in its smoke-specific static build. The pinned SDK CRT remains a necessary startup component: it resolves its own runtime loader primitives and may conditionally load libSceSysmodule. This source-bound startup behavior is declared separately and is not confused with a RetroArch dynamic-core path.

HAVE_CONFIGFILE=0, HAVE_MENU=0 and HAVE_RGUI=0 remove their read, browser and save paths. Independently, the PS5 frontend sets RARCH_CTL_SET_BLOCK_CONFIG_READ, provides no config path, and the smoke firewall rejects every attempted write.

Visible record

The static core draws CHIMERA RETROARCH PS5 SMOKE TEST, a build/manifest label, phase, monotonic elapsed time, frame count, VideoOut and framebuffer details, raw button/stick state, AudioOut counters, core state, shutdown reason, first sticky error, write-firewall state and both hard limits.

Phases are stable S00 through S15; errors are stable E000 and E101 through E123. S07 RUNNING and a final rendered S08 SHUTDOWN_REQUESTED are expected on screen. S09 through S15 occur during teardown after the final present and therefore remain in the in-memory record rather than being promised as visible frames.

Bounded control

The first condition wins:

1. Options held for 2,000 ms;
2. 60,000 monotonic milliseconds;
3. 3,600 core frames;
4. a sticky runtime/write-firewall failure.

The pinned SDL mapping maps the PS5 Options bit to SDL Back, which RetroArch exposes to the core as RETRO_DEVICE_ID_JOYPAD_SELECT. Shutdown is requested once. There is no retry, second run or automatic extension.

No host test or static audit in this phase is hardware evidence.