QEMU as a Test Target #

QEMU is a portable open source emulator for x86, MIPS, ARM, PPC, and Sparc. For the purposes of QNX, this makes a handy tool for quick tests and debugging. Some supported features are snapshots, basic networking, and gdb integration. Eventually, it should be possible to debug the kernel much like you can do with VMware, but for all architectures supported by QNX except for SuperHitachi. The port is still a work in progress, and experimental, but most major problems have been worked out.

Advantages over a virtual machine like VMWare is that QEMU has a Neutrino port, and can emulate many targets. There are advantages to using Neutrino as a development platform rather than cross-development, and QEMU is currently the only emulator that runs on Neutrino. QEMU can be used when a test machine is not available or practical, or for running dangerous tests that may lock the system or alter important files. The snapshot feature is extremely useful for this. A system can be restored to a previous state quickly, or saved after boot for a fast startup.

QEMU now has it's own project page, and so the guides have been moved there.#

See the QEMU Community Project Wiki#