Pandora Emulator Idea

[quartercast]

Has anyone tried building a Pandora Emulator/Simulator with Qemu?


Apparently this has been done for Beagleboard around 1 year ago:


http://www.cnx-software.com/2011/09/26/beagleboard-emulator-in-ubuntu-with-qemu/


http://rblurb.blogspot.sg/2012/03/beagleboard-emulator.html


https://wiki.linaro.org/Resources/HowTo/Qemu-beagleboard


I think it'd certainly be useful as a dev environment, instead of installing a toolchain, actually having a virtual pandora with dev libs installed would be great to compile things and create PNDs.


It seems linaro is once again responsible for much of the work in this case, I wonder if OP has ever communicated with them before.


Edit: Qemu indeed!

 

[Foxgod]

Has anyone tried building a Pandora Emulator/Simulator?


Apparently this has been done for Beagleboard around 1 year ago:


http://www.cnx-softw...untu-with-qemu/


http://rblurb.blogsp...d-emulator.html


https://wiki.linaro....emu-beagleboard


I think it'd certainly be useful as a dev environment, instead of installing a toolchain, actually having a virtual pandora with dev libs installed would be great to compile things and create PNDs.


It seems linaro is once again responsible for much of the work in this case, I wonder if OP has ever communicated with them before.

Would it be possible to install the pandora OS in Qemu on pc?


Offtopic:


Howabout installing pandora in qemu on a pandora, then running pandora on a pandora? would be like a dream in a dream!

 

[bzar]

quartercast: I would like this too. Don't get me wrong, the cross-compilation toolchains are nice and all, but they're still nowhere near the process used for compiling natively especially when it comes to using libs that are not included in the base OS. I'd very much like an environment where I could just compile stuff like usual, getting needed libs and headers from package management, then pick needed .so's to the PND and package. I don't care if the compilation takes five times as long, since I'm currently using at least ten times that messing with cross-compilation.

 

[notaz]

It might be possible to just run that beagle version with pandora's OS, but you would miss pandora specific stuff like nubs support, probably audio aswell as it's different. It other words, it might be worth trying.

 

[TrashyMG]

I'm not sure if Qemu could handle the omap framebuffer correctly.. could I be wrong about this?

 

[notaz]

But it does handle video for beagle somehow? I know it has some OMAP3 SoC level support for sure.

 

[laurencevde]

I see little use for such a thing. A real Pandora is faster, and you can do all of your compilation on the Pandora. Or try distcc to get your desktops to help along. It also won't be able to emulate all of the hardware, particularly the PowerVR and the nubs, so it won't be able to run exactly the same OS in exactly the same manner. It can be used for testing, but as it's still an imperfect emulator, you have no guarantee that everything actually works exactly as intended...

 

[bzar]

I for one have no interest in having HW support on the VM. I'd just like an environment where I can install from package management everything I need for compiling stuff and carry on like on a desktop. It's all the same to me if it's just a bash command line. I'll test and run on device anyway.

 

[Cloudef]

I for one have no interest in having HW support on the VM. I'd just like an environment where I can install from package management everything I need for compiling stuff and carry on like on a desktop. It's all the same to me if it's just a bash command line. I'll test and run on device anyway.

Use distcc.


You might want to install distro that makes using distcc less painless though.

 

[quartercast]

It other words, it might be worth trying.

I'll try soon, I'm a bit under the weather atm w/ the cold virus spreading around rapidly in Singapore. No doubt you'd progress with a solution much faster than I could


Like B-Zar I'd love to be able to emulate even the command-line interface of a would-be pandora running Superzaxxon. I'd do all my compiling on that, regardless of the actual compiling time. I'd probably actually save time not having to fool around with toolchains and other cross-compiling headaches. As much as I've enjoyed porting software directly on the pandora (in angstrom and debian) it does get very tedious on that little screen and gummy keyboard. Sure a video cable and keyboard combined with distcc might help, but I get the feeling working on a virtual pandora would be less cumbersome in terms of getting the dev environment set up (it would simply mean booting up a qemu pandora dev image!). And think of all the people without a pandora, how cool would it be for them to muck around porting software on a virtual pandora?


As notaz said, work has already been done to get beagleboard video working, and I see networking is also there too. So in terms of bb they've already progressed beyond the CLI. I hope to one day have a Pandora Superzaxxon/Yars desktop emulated on my macbook

 

[bzar]

I'll give distcc a try, but won't I run into problems getting all the necessary libs and stuff from opkg with superzaxxon? Should I do an SD install just to be safe?

 

[laurencevde]

Set up a dev environment (in a chroot?) on the Pandora, mount your Pandora's filesystem on your desktop (f.ex with sshfs) so that you can code on your desktop, ssh into your Pandora, and compile from there. Set up distcc to get your desktop(s) to help along.


Effectively very similar to a VM, but faster, and fully functional.

 

[sswam]

I'd like to set up distcc and such, but I tried it once between 2 pandoras and failed to get it working right.

Not too sure about how to do it with cross compilers and all.

Would someone like to write a Pandora distcc tutorial, maybe for the pandoralive.info blog?

I guess I could ask questions as needed, set it up, and write the tutorial.

 

[frostfall]

I tried little programs on Pandora Lazarus compiler. I launched x11vnc on the pandora and worked on my main computer and it helped a lot