%poky; ] > Quick EMUlator (QEMU) is an Open Source project the Yocto Project uses as part of its development "toolset". As such, the information in this chapter is limited to the Yocto Project instatiation of QEMU and not QEMU in general. For official information and documentation on QEMU, see the following references: QEMU Website: The official website for the QEMU Open Source project. Documentation: The QEMU user manual. This chapter provides an overview of the Yocto Project instantiation of QEMU, a description of how you use QEMU and its various options and modes, and a few tips and tricks you might find helpful when using QEMU.

Within the context of the Yocto Project, QEMU is an emulator and virtualization machine that allows you to run a complete image you have built using the Yocto Project as just another task on your build system. QEMU is useful for running and testing images and applications on supported Yocto Project architectures without having actual hardware. QEMU is made available with the Yocto Project a number of ways. The easiest and recommended method for getting QEMU is to run the ADT installer. For more information on how to make sure you have QEMU available, see the "The QEMU Emulator" section in the Yocto Project Application Developer's Guide.

Running QEMU involves having your build environment set up, having the right artifacts available, and understanding how to use the many options that are available to you when you start QEMU using the runqemu command.

You run QEMU in the same environment from which you run BitBake. This means you need to source a build environment script (i.e. &OE_INIT_FILE; or oe-init-build-env-memres).

The basic runqemu command syntax is as follows: $ runqemu [option ] [option ] [...] runqemu does a good job based on what you provide with the command at figuring out what you are trying to do. Minimally, through the use of options, you must provide either a machine name, a virtual machine image (*.vmdk), or a kernel image (*.bin). If you do provide some "illegal" combination or options or perhaps do not provide enough in the way of options, runqemu provides appropriate error messaging to help you figure it out. Following is a description of runqemu options you can provide on the command line: QEMUARCH: The QEMU machine architecture, which can be "qemux86", "qemux86-64", "qemuarm", "qemumips", "qemumipsel", “qemumips64", "qemush4", "qemuppc", "qemumicroblaze", or "qemuzynq".