Version 2.8.0-10 is a maintenance release; it fixes one bug and updates to the new, more robust, build scripts.

The xPack QEMU Arm is the xPack distribution of the QEMU, with several extensions for Arm Cortex-M devices.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64 and x86), macOS (x64) and GNU/Linux (x64 and x86, arm64 and arm).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Install

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

Easy install

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

To install the latest version available, use:

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

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm@2.8.0-10.1

Compliance

xPack QEMU Arm currently is based on the official QEMU, with major changes.

The current version is based on:

  • QEMU version 2.8.0, commit 0737f32 from Dec 20th, 2016.

Changes

Compared to the master qemu-system-arm, the changes are major, all application class Arm devices were removed and replaced by several Cortex-M devices.

The supported boards are:

xPack 64-bit QEMU v2.8.0 (qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse).

Supported boards:
  Maple                LeafLab Arduino-style STM32 microcontroller board (r5)
  NUCLEO-F103RB        ST Nucleo Development Board for STM32 F1 series
  NUCLEO-F411RE        ST Nucleo Development Board for STM32 F4 series
  NetduinoGo           Netduino GoBus Development Board with STM32F4
  NetduinoPlus2        Netduino Development Board with STM32F4
  OLIMEXINO-STM32      Olimex Maple (Arduino-like) Development Board
  STM32-E407           Olimex Development Board for STM32F407ZGT6
  STM32-H103           Olimex Header Board for STM32F103RBT6
  STM32-P103           Olimex Prototype Board for STM32F103RBT6
  STM32-P107           Olimex Prototype Board for STM32F107VCT6
  STM32F0-Discovery    ST Discovery kit for STM32F051 lines
  STM32F4-Discovery    ST Discovery kit for STM32F407/417 lines
  STM32F429I-Discovery ST Discovery kit for STM32F429/439 lines
  generic              Generic Cortex-M board; use -mcu to define the device

Supported MCUs:
  STM32F051R8
  STM32F103RB
  STM32F107VC
  STM32F405RG
  STM32F407VG
  STM32F407ZG
  STM32F411RE
  STM32F429ZI

Warning: support for hardware floating point on Cortex-M4 devices is not available yet.

Bug fixes

  • [#5] - the ETM and ITM fields get mixed up when parsing the SVD; fixed.

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • Ctrl-C does not interrupt the execution if the --nographic option is used.

Shared libraries

On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime (including X11) to be present on the host.

All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally in the same folder as the executable.

DT_RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

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

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

@executable_path

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

Documentation

The original documentation is available in the share/doc folder.

Supported platforms

Binaries for Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux are provided.

The binaries 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.

  • x86/x64 GNU/Linux: all binaries were built with GCC 9.3, running in an Ubuntu 12 Docker container
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: all binaries were built with GCC 9.3, running in an Ubuntu 16 Docker container (added in mid-2020)
  • x86/x64 Windows: all binaries were built with mingw-w64 GCC 9.3, running in an Ubuntu 12 Docker container
  • x64 macOS: all binaries were built with GCC 9.3, running in a separate folder on macOS 10.10.5.

Build

The scripts used to build this distribution are in:

  • distro-info/scripts

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the README-MAINTAINER page.

Travis tests

The first set of tests were performed on Travis, by running a simple script to check if the binaries start on a wide range of platforms and distributions:

Tests

The binaries were testes on Windows 10 Pro 32/64-bit, Ubuntu 18 LTS 64-bit, Xubuntu 18 LTS 32-bit and macOS 10.14.

The tests consist in running a simple blinky application on the graphically emulated STM32F4DISCOVERY board. The binaries were those generated by the simple Eclipse projects available in the xPack GNU Arm Embedded GCC project. Use the arm-f4b-fs-debug-qemu debug luncher available in the arm-f4b-fs project.

On Arm platforms, where Eclipse is not yet available, the binaries were tested on Raspberry Pi OS 10 (buster) 32-bit by manually starting the blinky test on the emulated STM32F4DISCOVERY board.

~/opt/xPacks/@xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm/2.8.0-10.1/.content/bin/qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse --version

mkdir -p ~/Downloads
(cd ~/Downloads; curl -L --fail -o f407-disc-blink-tutorial.elf \
https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/qemu-eclipse-test-projects/raw/master/f407-disc-blink-tutorial/Debug/f407-disc-blink-tutorial.elf)

~/opt/xPacks/@xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm/2.8.0-10.1/.content/bin/qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse \
--board STM32F4-Discovery \
-d unimp,guest_errors \
--nographic \
--image ~/Downloads/f407-disc-blink-tutorial.elf \
--semihosting-config enable=on,target=native \
--semihosting-cmdline test 6

DISPLAY=:1.0 ~/opt/xPacks/@xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm/2.8.0-10.1/.content/bin/qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse \
--board STM32F4-Discovery \
-d unimp,guest_errors \
--image ~/Downloads/f407-disc-blink-tutorial.elf \
--semihosting-config enable=on,target=native \
--semihosting-cmdline test 6

On Raspberry Pi OS 10 (buster) 64-bit the program was able to run in non graphic mode, but did not start in graphic mode due to a missing driver. To be further investigated.

Checksums

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-darwin-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-arm.tar.gz

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-x32.tar.gz

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-win32-x32.zip

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xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-win32-x64.zip

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