How to build qemu-system-arm in Linux

Most (all?) Linux distributions have a binary package for qemu-system (including qemu-system-arm) in order to emulate non-x86 targets such as ARM, MIPS, PPC, Alpha and more.

However, in some case you may need to very latest version of qemu-system and it may not be able yet for your distribution.

Here’s how to do to build qemu-system-arm without building all qemu-system-***:

1. Download the latest stable version of qemu (qemu 1.0.1 at the time this post was written):
   
   wget http://wiki.qemu.org/download/qemu-1.0.1.tar.gz

   1	wget http://wiki.qemu.org/download/qemu-1.0.1.tar.gz

   
   or get the latest source code (development tree) which has the very latest features and bug fixes, but may not work or compile:
   
   git clone git://git.qemu.org/qemu.git

   1	git clone git://git.qemu.org/qemu.git

   
   or get the latest source code from linaro (which may be more up-to-date for ARM targets):
   
   git clone git://git.linaro.org/qemu/qemu-linaro.git

   1	git clone git://git.linaro.org/qemu/qemu-linaro.git

2. Configure qemu to build ARM targets:
   
   cd qemu ./configure --target-list=arm-softmmu,arm-linux-user

   1 2	cd qemu ./configure --target-list=arm-softmmu,arm-linux-user

3. Build and install qemu-system-arm:
   
   make -j 2 sudo make install

   1 2	make -j 2 sudo make install

4. Verify the latest version of qemu-ssytem-arm is installed:
   
   # qemu-system-arm --version QEMU emulator version 1.0,1, Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

   1 2	# qemu-system-arm --version QEMU emulator version 1.0,1, Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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