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xPack QEMU Arm v2.8.0-13 released

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

Version 2.8.0-13 is a maintenance release; it fixes a bug and updates to the latests build environment.

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 (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.

Prerequisites​

  • x86/x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.15 or higher (like Ubuntu 12 or later, Debian 8 or later, RedHat/CentOS 7 later, Fedora 20 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.23 or higher (like Ubuntu 16 or later, Debian 9 or later, RedHat/CentOS 8 or later, Fedora 24 or later, etc)
  • x86/x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 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 easiest way to install this specific version, is by using xpm:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/qemu-arm@2.8.0-13.1 -verbose

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

Compliance​

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

Bug fixes​

  • [#15] - in certain conditions, with some linker script memory configurations, the emulator failed complaining that the flash regions overlap; the problem was fixed on in v2.11 and the two related patches were cherry picked and adapted to this distribution.

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.

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:

Tests​

The binaries were testes on Windows 11 Pro, Ubuntu 22 LTS (x64) and macOS 14.5.

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.

.../xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13/bin/qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse --version
xPack 64-bit QEMU emulator version 2.8.0-11 (v2.8.0-12-4-gb1ab9f0b32-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)

.../xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13/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 .../xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13/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:

9001c6befdd791f814d9c64b903915ab10983d9c80659a6d4e811290759159b7
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-darwin-x64.tar.gz

b1b1046365ecd0d72cbb1c7d18df1451595347f454bfc6ed9fc99d3ced133ac3
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-linux-arm.tar.gz

386abf59c78b3b840314ddcbdad42086ef88e9d3197c44201460c0e78b094a3e
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-linux-arm64.tar.gz

a83921f994e6062abdfef49c1fd13f3aa898e85bbaeabc18b443f1176656c285
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-linux-ia32.tar.gz

b99b87541f13e594f09f6a8ce656d84e0c0ac9623227ee6f2ba2a46c7e67a350
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-linux-x64.tar.gz

710f0ba1a90eb8fa60d88e1a3160b8e57bf8ccb8f8232d0a036090ea0dcea9c0
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-win32-ia32.zip

c7c35e03a3c861b5f21d8564074cb928f1478eeb2c8a2e8ee53e7513c39e2750
xpack-qemu-arm-2.8.0-13-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows will most probably be 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 will most probably be dropped in 2022, and the minimum requirement will be raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics​

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