Emacs plugin you say? I would love to see someone create an emulator-dev minor mode that would take a code project like is defined in the emacs-project-mode and create a disk image that could be loaded by a target emulator.

Ideally it could be set up to configure and launch an emulator which would then build the code tree with the platform's native development tools (if needed).

Here's a concrete example:

  1. Use emacs to write an AppleSoft BASIC program, myfile.txt"
  2. C-x <run-on-emulator>
  3. Automatically create a *.dsk file image, with the following files
     a) PRODOS and BASIC.SYSTEM installed
     b) a STARTUP program that executes the file, i.e.
        10 PRINT $CHR(4);"-MYFILE.TXT"

  4. Create (for example) a linapple configuration file to load this DSK image
  5. Start the emulator