i tried to submit a patch to retroarch and it was one of the least pleasant experiences i've had in a while. makefile hell, layers and layers of incomprehensible macros, and spaghetti code everywhere. no thank you. i may be a masochist but i still respect my time.

Same, IMO most of the main devs are extremely toxic, and their turnover rate among contributors is the worst I've ever seen in my 30 years of professional and volunteer/FOSS coding.