xPack QEMU Arm v6.2.0-2 released

Version 6.2.0-2 is a maintenance release; it fixes graphical issues on macOS.

The xPack QEMU Arm is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of QEMU, with several extensions for Arm Cortex-M devices.

There are separate binaries for Windows (64-bit), macOS (x64, arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

Note: The main targets for the GNU/Linux Arm binaries are the Raspberry Pi class devices (armv7l and aarch64; armv6 is not supported).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

• x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
• arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
• x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
• x64 macOS: 10.13 or later; graphical mode available on 10.14 or later
• arm64 macOS: 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 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.

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

cd my-project
xpm init # Only at first use.

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

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm@6.2.0-2.1

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

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

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

Note: Eclipse has integrated support only for qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse. qemu-system-arm can be used in debug sessions only when started outside Eclipse.

Uninstall

To remove the links from the current project:

cd my-project

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

To completely remove the package from the central xPacks store:

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

Compliance

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

There are two sets of binaries:

• qemu-system-arm and qemu-system-aarch64, based on QEMU version 6.2.0, commit 44f28df2 from Dec 14th, 2021;

• qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse, based on QEMU version 2.8.0, commit 0737f32 from Dec 20th, 2016; this is end-of-life and will be preserved only for compatibility reasons.

Changes

Compared to the upstream qemu-system-arm, there are no major changes.

The supported boards and CPUs are:

$ .../qemu-system-arm -machine help
Supported machines are:
akita                Sharp SL-C1000 (Akita) PDA (PXA270)
ast2500-evb          Aspeed AST2500 EVB (ARM1176)
ast2600-evb          Aspeed AST2600 EVB (Cortex-A7)
borzoi               Sharp SL-C3100 (Borzoi) PDA (PXA270)
canon-a1100          Canon PowerShot A1100 IS (ARM946)
cheetah              Palm Tungsten|E aka. Cheetah PDA (OMAP310)
collie               Sharp SL-5500 (Collie) PDA (SA-1110)
connex               Gumstix Connex (PXA255)
cubieboard           cubietech cubieboard (Cortex-A8)
emcraft-sf2          SmartFusion2 SOM kit from Emcraft (M2S010)
fp5280g2-bmc         Inspur FP5280G2 BMC (ARM1176)
fuji-bmc             Facebook Fuji BMC (Cortex-A7)
g220a-bmc            Bytedance G220A BMC (ARM1176)
highbank             Calxeda Highbank (ECX-1000)
imx25-pdk            ARM i.MX25 PDK board (ARM926)
integratorcp         ARM Integrator/CP (ARM926EJ-S)
kudo-bmc             Kudo BMC (Cortex-A9)
kzm                  ARM KZM Emulation Baseboard (ARM1136)
lm3s6965evb          Stellaris LM3S6965EVB (Cortex-M3)
lm3s811evb           Stellaris LM3S811EVB (Cortex-M3)
mainstone            Mainstone II (PXA27x)
mcimx6ul-evk         Freescale i.MX6UL Evaluation Kit (Cortex-A7)
mcimx7d-sabre        Freescale i.MX7 DUAL SABRE (Cortex-A7)
microbit             BBC micro:bit (Cortex-M0)
midway               Calxeda Midway (ECX-2000)
mps2-an385           ARM MPS2 with AN385 FPGA image for Cortex-M3
mps2-an386           ARM MPS2 with AN386 FPGA image for Cortex-M4
mps2-an500           ARM MPS2 with AN500 FPGA image for Cortex-M7
mps2-an505           ARM MPS2 with AN505 FPGA image for Cortex-M33
mps2-an511           ARM MPS2 with AN511 DesignStart FPGA image for Cortex-M3
mps2-an521           ARM MPS2 with AN521 FPGA image for dual Cortex-M33
mps3-an524           ARM MPS3 with AN524 FPGA image for dual Cortex-M33
mps3-an547           ARM MPS3 with AN547 FPGA image for Cortex-M55
musca-a              ARM Musca-A board (dual Cortex-M33)
musca-b1             ARM Musca-B1 board (dual Cortex-M33)
musicpal             Marvell 88w8618 / MusicPal (ARM926EJ-S)
n800                 Nokia N800 tablet aka. RX-34 (OMAP2420)
n810                 Nokia N810 tablet aka. RX-44 (OMAP2420)
netduino2            Netduino 2 Machine (Cortex-M3)
netduinoplus2        Netduino Plus 2 Machine (Cortex-M4)
none                 empty machine
npcm750-evb          Nuvoton NPCM750 Evaluation Board (Cortex-A9)
nuri                 Samsung NURI board (Exynos4210)
orangepi-pc          Orange Pi PC (Cortex-A7)
palmetto-bmc         OpenPOWER Palmetto BMC (ARM926EJ-S)
quanta-gbs-bmc       Quanta GBS (Cortex-A9)
quanta-gsj           Quanta GSJ (Cortex-A9)
quanta-q71l-bmc      Quanta-Q71l BMC (ARM926EJ-S)
rainier-bmc          IBM Rainier BMC (Cortex-A7)
raspi0               Raspberry Pi Zero (revision 1.2)
raspi1ap             Raspberry Pi A+ (revision 1.1)
raspi2b              Raspberry Pi 2B (revision 1.1)
realview-eb          ARM RealView Emulation Baseboard (ARM926EJ-S)
realview-eb-mpcore   ARM RealView Emulation Baseboard (ARM11MPCore)
realview-pb-a8       ARM RealView Platform Baseboard for Cortex-A8
realview-pbx-a9      ARM RealView Platform Baseboard Explore for Cortex-A9
romulus-bmc          OpenPOWER Romulus BMC (ARM1176)
sabrelite            Freescale i.MX6 Quad SABRE Lite Board (Cortex-A9)
smdkc210             Samsung SMDKC210 board (Exynos4210)
sonorapass-bmc       OCP SonoraPass BMC (ARM1176)
spitz                Sharp SL-C3000 (Spitz) PDA (PXA270)
stm32vldiscovery     ST STM32VLDISCOVERY (Cortex-M3)
supermicrox11-bmc    Supermicro X11 BMC (ARM926EJ-S)
swift-bmc            OpenPOWER Swift BMC (ARM1176) (deprecated)
sx1                  Siemens SX1 (OMAP310) V2
sx1-v1               Siemens SX1 (OMAP310) V1
tacoma-bmc           OpenPOWER Tacoma BMC (Cortex-A7)
terrier              Sharp SL-C3200 (Terrier) PDA (PXA270)
tosa                 Sharp SL-6000 (Tosa) PDA (PXA255)
verdex               Gumstix Verdex (PXA270)
versatileab          ARM Versatile/AB (ARM926EJ-S)
versatilepb          ARM Versatile/PB (ARM926EJ-S)
vexpress-a15         ARM Versatile Express for Cortex-A15
vexpress-a9          ARM Versatile Express for Cortex-A9
virt-2.10            QEMU 2.10 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-2.11            QEMU 2.11 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-2.12            QEMU 2.12 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-2.6             QEMU 2.6 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-2.7             QEMU 2.7 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-2.8             QEMU 2.8 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-2.9             QEMU 2.9 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-3.0             QEMU 3.0 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-3.1             QEMU 3.1 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-4.0             QEMU 4.0 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-4.1             QEMU 4.1 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-4.2             QEMU 4.2 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-5.0             QEMU 5.0 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-5.1             QEMU 5.1 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-5.2             QEMU 5.2 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-6.0             QEMU 6.0 ARM Virtual Machine
virt-6.1             QEMU 6.1 ARM Virtual Machine
virt                 QEMU 6.2 ARM Virtual Machine (alias of virt-6.2)
virt-6.2             QEMU 6.2 ARM Virtual Machine
witherspoon-bmc      OpenPOWER Witherspoon BMC (ARM1176)
xilinx-zynq-a9       Xilinx Zynq Platform Baseboard for Cortex-A9
z2                   Zipit Z2 (PXA27x)
$ .../qemu-arm/bin/qemu-system-arm -cpu help
Available CPUs:
  arm1026
  arm1136
  arm1136-r2
  arm1176
  arm11mpcore
  arm926
  arm946
  cortex-a15
  cortex-a7
  cortex-a8
  cortex-a9
  cortex-m0
  cortex-m3
  cortex-m33
  cortex-m4
  cortex-m55
  cortex-m7
  cortex-r5
  cortex-r5f
  max
  pxa250
  pxa255
  pxa260
  pxa261
  pxa262
  pxa270-a0
  pxa270-a1
  pxa270
  pxa270-b0
  pxa270-b1
  pxa270-c0
  pxa270-c5
  sa1100
  sa1110
  ti925t

Legacy

The qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse binary is now deprecated, and is kept only for compatibility reasons.

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:
  BluePill             BluePill STM32F103C8T6
  Maple                LeafLab Arduino-style STM32 microcontroller board (r5)
  NUCLEO-F072RB        ST Nucleo Development Board for STM32 F072 devices
  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 line
  STM32F051-Discovery  ST Discovery kit for STM32F051 line
  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
  STM32F407VGTx <- new
  STM32F407ZG
  STM32F411RE
  STM32F429ZI
  STM32F429ZITx <- new>

Warning: In this old release, support for hardware floating point on Cortex-M4 devices is not available.

Bug fixes

• [#18] the SDL requirement to run the graphical loop on the main thread is enforced on new macOS versions, and the QEMU SDL support requires some more work; revert to Cocoa; this also required running the x64 macOS build on macOS 10.14.

Enhancements

• none

Known problems

• for qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse, 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 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:

• https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/

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.

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.

CI tests

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

• GitHub Actions
• Travis CI

Tests

The binaries were testes on Windows 10 Pro (x64), Ubuntu 18 LTS (x64), macOS 10.15 (x64) and 11.6 (arm64).

For qemu-system-arm and qemu-system-aarch64, the tests consist in simple, non-graphical, semihosting apps. The binaries are borrowed from µTest++ and are available from the tests folder.

.../xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-1/bin/qemu-system-arm --version
xPack QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 (v6.2.0-1-xpack-arm)
Copyright (c) 2003-2021 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers

mkdir -p ~/Downloads
(cd ~/Downloads; curl -L --fail -o mps2-an386-sample-test.elf \
https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm-xpack/raw/xpack/tests/mps2-an386-sample-test.elf)

.../xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-1/bin/qemu-system-arm \
--machine mps2-an386 \
--kernel ~Downloads/mps2-an386-sample-test.elf \
--nographic \
-d unimp,guest_errors \
--semihosting-config enable=on,target=native,arg=sample-test,arg=one,arg=two
...

For qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse, 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 platforms where Eclipse is not available, the binaries were tested by manually starting the blinky test on the emulated STM32F4DISCOVERY board.

.../qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse --version
xPack 64-bit QEMU emulator version 2.8.0 (v2.8.0-14-xpack-legacy-dirty)
Copyright (c) 2003-2016 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers

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)

.../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 5
...

DISPLAY=:1.0 .../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 5
...

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:

4094a0b94a6372d18db259f0271a9bd78c4366ba0acaf368a41e28d1553f30c9
xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

3f85327921d286cd88325444fe8203efd1ec060966d8892d02484e01fcae7a88
xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

c2ad2af2dcdc4fdc6e139a881e480ee10528f6c7731df17c62b50d6ae41cbcb7
xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-2-linux-arm.tar.gz

bca775c258865645def4fb4bd6e5308116ca5e8e08c1414224a50bdf9b730adc
xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

8a2c62c3d08685d249f80ee7f2cb5dd159f26e41b4da57ecdc561ab2cffb5429
xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-2-linux-x64.tar.gz

6f66eaacad1cfcd1871f3ddbcd64f8f829e1c27302aef2ac5f8dc1b1161f6ccc
xpack-qemu-arm-6.2.0-2-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

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

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