Version 8.2.2-1 is a new release; it follows the upstream QEMU release.

The xPack QEMU RISC-V is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of QEMU.

There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit, Apple Silicon 64-bit) and GNU/Linux (Intel 64-bit, Arm 32/64-bit).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • GNU/Linux Intel 64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • GNU/Linux Arm 32/64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • Intel Windows 64-bit: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • macOS Intel 64-bit: 10.13 or later
  • macOS Apple Silicon 64-bit: 11.6 or later

On GNU/Linux, QEMU requires the X11 libraries to be present. On Debian derived distribution they are already in the system; on RedHat & Arch derived distributions they must be installed explicitly.

Install

The full details of installing the xPack QEMU RISC-V on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.

Easy install

The easiest way to install QEMU RISC-V is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-riscv from the npmjs.com registry.

With the xpm tool available, installing the latest version of the package and adding it as a development dependency for a project is quite easy:

cd my-project
xpm init # Add a package.json if not already present

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-riscv@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-riscv@8.2.2-1.1 --verbose

For xPacks aware tools, like the Eclipse Embedded C/C++ plug-ins, it is also possible to install QEMU RISC-V globally, in the user home folder.

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-riscv@latest --verbose

Eclipse will automatically identify binaries installed with xpm and provide a convenient method to manage paths.

Uninstall

To remove the links created by xpm in the current project:

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-riscv

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-riscv

Compliance

The xPack QEMU RISC-V currently is based on the official QEMU, with major changes.

The current version is based on:

  • QEMU version 8.2.2, commit 11aa0b1f from 4 Mar 2024.

Changes

Compared to the master qemu-system-riscv*, there are no major changes.

The supported boards and CPUs are:

$ .../xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1/bin/qemu-system-riscv32 -machine help
Supported machines are:
none                 empty machine
opentitan            RISC-V Board compatible with OpenTitan
sifive_e             RISC-V Board compatible with SiFive E SDK
sifive_u             RISC-V Board compatible with SiFive U SDK
spike                RISC-V Spike board (default)
virt                 RISC-V VirtIO board
$ .../xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1/bin/qemu-system-riscv32 -cpu help
any
lowrisc-ibex
max
rv32
sifive-e31
sifive-e34
sifive-u34

$ .../xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1/bin/qemu-system-riscv64 -machine help
Supported machines are:
microchip-icicle-kit Microchip PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit
none                 empty machine
shakti_c             RISC-V Board compatible with Shakti SDK
sifive_e             RISC-V Board compatible with SiFive E SDK
sifive_u             RISC-V Board compatible with SiFive U SDK
spike                RISC-V Spike board (default)
virt                 RISC-V VirtIO board
$ .../xpack-qemu-riscv-7.0.0-1/bin/qemu-system-riscv64 -cpu help
any
max
rv64
shakti-c
sifive-e51
sifive-u54
thead-c906
veyron-v1
x-rv128

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • in order to build on macOS 10.13, the Intel macOS version has some functionality related to bridged virtual interfaces disabled.

Shared libraries

On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime to be present on the host.

All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally in the libexec folder (or in the same folder as the executable for Windows).

DT_RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

On GNU/Linux the binaries are adjusted to use a relative path:

$ readelf -d library.so | grep runpath
 0x000000000000001d (RPATH)            Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]

In the GNU ld.so search strategy, the DT_RPATH has the highest priority, higher than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so if this later one is set in the environment, it should not interfere with the xPack binaries.

Please note that previous versions, up to mid-2020, used DT_RUNPATH, which has a priority lower than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and does not tolerate setting it in the environment.

@rpath and @loader_path

Similarly, on macOS, the binaries are adjusted with install_name_tool to use a relative path.

Documentation

The original documentation is available on-line:

Build

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the How to build page.

CI tests

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Tests

TBD

Checksums

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

bdd409d7200e1ea7852efc0ac03ac2a38892857714d9ffc8f47fc86bcc3a8730
xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

d80c9abae88bcc52280b91e2d3921fa22aa6267614b6e627736ed4e02c3a91d1
xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

d73bf3a4904e10b485d46adcd50c877cce13f9ac8d097b67e5643108d751172e
xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

765ac55d58adfb31e7a88baadc9a9cf46eb30e8030d437bdc076747d63f0474c
xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

d5b8f77cb3ad23b29421f7fdc5456866b1a10817efacb262bbda038ca1c5a5a5
xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

c0d1febb95bb01e093dfd5d701eea825bdadc9009b5780eb5581186bd75c1f96
xpack-qemu-riscv-8.2.2-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

Linux minimum requirements

The minimum requirement is GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8. Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022.

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit Intel Linux and Intel Windows was dropped in 2022.

Pre-deprecation notice for 32-bit Arm Linux

Due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems, support for 32-bit Arm Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a little while, but expect it to be dropped by 2025, so it is recommended to consider an upgrade to a RPi 4 or 5 with at least 4 GB (preferably 8 GB) of RAM.

Pre-deprecation notice for Ubuntu 18.04

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reached the end of the standard five-year maintenance window for Long-Term Support (LTS) release on 31 May 2023.

As a courtesy, the xPack GNU/Linux releases will continue to be based on Ubuntu 18.04 for another year.

From mid-2024 onwards, the GNU/Linux binaries will be built on Debian 10, (GLIBC 2.28), and are also expected to run on RedHat 8.

Users are urged to update their build and test infrastructure to ensure a smooth transition to the next xPack releases.

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