qemu in natty

[Steve Langasek]

Hi folks,

The qemu-kvm package in natty is in good shape for KVM users, but doesn't
work very well for anyone who wants to use it for emulation of non-x86
architectures.

A couple weeks ago I sat down with the Linaro toolchain engineers and the
Ubuntu server team to talk through how we can fix this without disrupting
the KVM support, given that most of the work for supporting other targets of
interest (e.g., ARM) is done on a very different upstream branch from the
qemu-kvm branch.  We think we've come up with a plan for how to do this:

 - A new source package, qemu-linaro, will be uploaded to natty that is
   based on the monthly Linaro releases of qemu.  These releases are derived
   from the maemo qemu branch, with Linaro-sourced ARM fixes added on top.
   This package is not going to work very well for x86 targets; will work
   very well for ARM targets; and should be no worse than qemu-kvm for other
   targets.

 - qemu-linaro will build a set of qemu-{system,user,user-static} packages,
   based off the existing qemu packaging in Debian; these packages will ship
   the corresponding qemu binaries for all targets other than x86 which will
   remain separated out in qemu-kvm.

 - Bug reports for ARM emulation will be fielded by the Linaro toolchain
   working group.  There is no committment from the Linaro TC WG to address
   bugs in other emulation targets, beyond forwarding them upstream.  (This
   is no worse than how things stand currently.)

 - qemu-kvm-extras and qemu-kvm-extras-static will become dummy transition
   packages provided by qemu-linaro and depending on the new packages.

If anyone has any comments or concerns with this plan, please shout!

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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