The xPack QEMU Arm

A standalone cross-platform (Windows/macOS/Linux) QEMU Arm binary distribution, intended for reproducible builds.

In addition to the the binary archives and the package meta data, this project also includes the build scripts.

Overview

This open source project is hosted on GitHub as xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm-xpack and provides the platform specific binaries for the xPack QEMU Arm.

This distribution is based on an current release of the official QEMU.

For compatibility reasons, it also provides the qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse, which reached end-of-life.

The binaries can be installed automatically as binary xPacks or manually as portable archives.

Release schedule

This distribution plans to follow the official QEMU major releases, possibly with intermediate releases if necessary.

For qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse, which reached end-of-life, there are no planned releases.

User info

This section is intended as a shortcut for those who plan to use the QEMU Arm binaries. For full details please read the xPack QEMU Arm pages.

Easy install

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

Prerequisites

A recent xpm, which is a portable Node.js command line application that complements npm with several extra features specific to C/C++ projects.

It is recommended to install/update to the latest version with:

npm install --location=global xpm@latest

For details please follow the instructions in the xPack install page.

Install

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-arm@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

This command will:

install the latest available version, into the central xPacks store, if not already there
add symbolic links to the central store (or .cmd forwarders on Windows) into the local xpacks/.bin folder.

The central xPacks store is a platform dependent location in the home folder; check the output of the xpm command for the actual folder used on your platform. This location is configurable via the environment variable XPACKS_STORE_FOLDER; for more details please check the xpm folders page.

For xPacks aware tools, like the Eclipse Embedded C/C++ plug-ins, it is also possible to install QEMU 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.

After install, the package should create a structure like this (macOS files; only the first two depth levels are shown):

$ tree -L 2 /Users/ilg/Library/xPacks/@xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm/7.2.5-1.1/.content/
/Users/ilg/Library/xPacks/@xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm/7.2.5-1.1/.content/
├── README.md
├── bin
│   ├── qemu-system-aarch64
│   ├── qemu-system-arm
│   └── qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse
├── distro-info
│   ├── CHANGELOG.md
│   ├── licenses
│   ├── patches
│   └── scripts
├── include
│   └── qemu-plugin.h
├── libexec
│   ├── libSDL2-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libSDL2_image-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libbz2.1.0.8.dylib
│   ├── libcrypto.1.1.dylib
│   ├── libffi.8.dylib
│   ├── libgio-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libglib-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libgmodule-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libgmp.10.dylib
│   ├── libgobject-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libgthread-2.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libhogweed.6.6.dylib
│   ├── libhogweed.6.dylib -> libhogweed.6.6.dylib
│   ├── libiconv.2.dylib
│   ├── libintl.8.dylib
│   ├── libjpeg.9.dylib
│   ├── liblzo2.2.dylib
│   ├── libncursesw.6.dylib
│   ├── libnettle.8.6.dylib
│   ├── libnettle.8.dylib -> libnettle.8.6.dylib
│   ├── libpcre2-8.0.dylib
│   ├── libpixman-1.0.42.2.dylib
│   ├── libpixman-1.0.dylib -> libpixman-1.0.42.2.dylib
│   ├── libpng16.16.dylib
│   ├── libssh.4.9.4.dylib
│   ├── libusb-1.0.0.dylib
│   ├── libvdeplug.3.dylib
│   ├── libz.1.2.13.dylib
│   ├── libz.1.dylib -> libz.1.2.13.dylib
│   └── libzstd.1.5.2.dylib
└── share
    ├── applications
    ├── icons
    ├── legacy
    └── qemu

13 directories, 36 files

No other files are installed in any system folders or other locations.

Uninstall

The binaries are distributed as portable archives; thus they do not need to run a setup and do not require an uninstall; simply removing the folder is enough.

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

cd my-project

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

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

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

Manual install

For all platforms, the xPack QEMU Arm binaries are released as portable archives that can be installed in any location.

The archives can be downloaded from the GitHub Releases page.

For more details please read the Install page.

Versioning

The version strings used by the QEMU project are three number strings like 7.2.5; to this string the xPack distribution adds a four number, but since semver allows only three numbers, all additional ones can be added only as pre-release strings, separated by a dash, like 7.2.5-1. When published as a npm package, the version gets a fifth number, like 7.2.5-1.1.

Since adherence of third party packages to semver is not guaranteed, it is recommended to use semver expressions like ^7.2.5 and ~7.2.5 with caution, and prefer exact matches, like 7.2.5-1.1.

Maintainer info

For maintainer info, please see the README-MAINTAINER.

Apple Silicon notice

Due to the major changes in macOS for Apple Silicon, the old qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse sources cannot be used and an Apple Silicon binary will not be available. A major update for xPack QEMU is planned for 2022, and some boards may be migrated to qemu-system-arm.

Support

The quick advice for getting support is to use the GitHub Discussions.

For more details please read the Support page.

License

The binary distributions include several open-source components; the corresponding licenses are available in the installed distro-info/licenses folder.

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