Re: [gccsdk] GCC8+ what new environment check is needed for packages

On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 12:26:47PM +0000, Chris Johns wrote:
> On 04/03/2021 08:38, Rob Kendrick wrote:
>
> > I don't think RPCemu provides any VFP, and I don't recall there being a
> > VFPEmulator module - but I admit to not looking for in a decade.
>
> I have before idly wondered if RPCEmu could be extended to handle VFP,
> either via a VFPEmulator module or even by emulating some sort of "StrongARM
> with VFP" processor. I do wonder if trying to support a 20+ year old
> platform just so that people can emulate it is all that sensible.

That isn't a bad idea, although it would cause divergence away from the
actual Risc PC hardware. You would still be limited by the RPC
architectural limitations (256MB memory etc) so it's questionable how much
it would gain you.

> > Perhaps it might be time to try porting RISC OS to a qemu target so we
> > can just plug in modern CPUs as they come along and use KVM on native
> > ARM hardware.
>
> I think people have got it running under Qemu in the past, but I seem to
> recall it was as modified version (of QEmu).

https://github.com/slp/qemu-riscos/commits/master
seems to suggest they modified QEMU to implement the Raspberry Pi hardware
enough to support vanilla RISC OS Pi images, rather than modifying RISC OS.

I think there would definitely be some mileage in writing suitable RISC OS
drivers for QEMU - eg VirtIO - which would make it more hypervisor friendly.
That would lift the limitations of the RPC hardware, although I don't know
how friendly the UI is on platforms that QEMU supports (virt-manager is OK
for KVM under Linux, not sure about Mac/Windows).

Theo

(For completeness I should also mention:
https://www.riscos.info/index.php/QEMU
which is QEMU with unfinished 26-bit mode support - not really usable)

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