[GRLUG] HUGE new QEMU release

[Tim Schmidt]

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
> Geez!  Please tell me that TCG, at least, is written in standard
> (either C89 or C99) C.  The fact that they can't get QEMU to work with
> a standard C compiler does not bode well for the project.  Depend on
> an in-house compiler suggests that they're going to have even greater
> difficulty transitioning to newer CPU architectures as host platforms.

Not at all.  QEMU is capable of full emulation as well as partial
emulation (with most code running natively on the host CPU - like
VMWare).  As such, QEMU itself needs to dynamically re-compile
executable code run through it, inserting traps and extra logic to
facilitate emulation.  I'm not clear on all the details, but much of
how QEMU accomplished this was tied to the compiler used at
build-time.  Now it is not.

Essentially, QEMU is (and needs to be) a compiler.  In the past, it
cleverly (and in a somewhat finicky way) exploited GCC.  Now it is
structured much more correctly, portably, and less buggily.

Much more information in the docs.

--tim