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xPack QEMU Arm v2.8.0-10 released

· 5 min read
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)

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).

Raspberry Pi

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.

Install​

The easiest way to install this specific version, is by using xpm:

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

Comprehensive instructions for installing xPack QEMU Arm on different platforms can be found in the Install Guide.

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.

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:

159752281b4352e2cc0b4ec329162bdcec9af003f7db4e9a3f7e37e8a0d0faf3
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-darwin-x64.tar.gz

63a83d93c96e224aa1df5ea8aec774e1b5932aa1167f6d2ec62dec7e3f0cd9ce
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-arm64.tar.gz

218f796c1ab8f246502faacf4759a830ca36fd918b45169612b587442aeabd33
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-arm.tar.gz

340099ec4076a55ff04964d2443f10af27a4cba98c8ad196c794e52d5072549e
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-x32.tar.gz

5d7d47519c1fbc35ded60ac98ac2c32519df09c8158c425d7da589e621863fcc
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-linux-x64.tar.gz

1515fb8f8207e4e05943b6a7671ccd148bc123611d3efe4123347cd01775a9d7
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-win32-x32.zip

02d1fc9287ba9d64d595b0ef6ded36858302c14ca80e80cc85386cf807b40f04
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-10-win32-x64.zip

Download analytics​

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.