path: root/docs/devel/build-system.rst

==================================
The QEMU build system architecture
==================================

This document aims to help developers understand the architecture of the
QEMU build system. As with projects using GNU autotools, the QEMU build
system has two stages, first the developer runs the "configure" script
to determine the local build environment characteristics, then they run
"make" to build the project. There is about where the similarities with
GNU autotools end, so try to forget what you know about them.


Stage 1: configure
==================

The QEMU configure script is written directly in shell, and should be
compatible with any POSIX shell, hence it uses #!/bin/sh. An important
implication of this is that it is important to avoid using bash-isms on
development platforms where bash is the primary host.

In contrast to autoconf scripts, QEMU's configure is expected to be
silent while it is checking for features. It will only display output
when an error occurs, or to show the final feature enablement summary
on completion.

Because QEMU uses the Meson build system under the hood, only VPATH
builds are supported.  There are two general ways to invoke configure &
perform a build:

 - VPATH, build artifacts outside of QEMU source tree entirely::

     cd ../
     mkdir build
     cd build
     ../qemu/configure
     make

 - VPATH, build artifacts in a subdir of QEMU source tree::

     mkdir build
     cd build
     ../configure
     make

For now, checks on the compilation environment are found in configure
rather than meson.build, though this is expected to change.  The command
line is parsed in the configure script and, whenever needed, converted
into the appropriate options to Meson.

New checks should be added to Meson, which usually comprises the
following tasks:

 - Add a Meson build option to meson_options.txt.

 - Add support to the command line arg parser to handle any new
   `--enable-XXX`/`--disable-XXX` flags required by the feature.

 - Add information to the help output message to report on the new
   feature flag.

 - Add code to perform the actual feature check.

 - Add code to include the feature status in `config-host.h`

 - Add code to print out the feature status in the configure summary
   upon completion.


Taking the probe for SDL2_Image as an example, we have the following pieces
in configure::

  # Initial variable state
  sdl_image=auto

  ..snip..

  # Configure flag processing
  --disable-sdl-image) sdl_image=disabled
  ;;
  --enable-sdl-image) sdl_image=enabled
  ;;

  ..snip..

  # Help output feature message
  sdl-image         SDL Image support for icons

  ..snip..

  # Meson invocation
  -Dsdl_image=$sdl_image

In meson_options.txt::

  option('sdl', type : 'feature', value : 'auto',
         description: 'SDL Image support for icons')

In meson.build::

  # Detect dependency
  sdl_image = dependency('SDL2_image', required: get_option('sdl_image'),
                         method: 'pkg-config',
                         static: enable_static)

  # Create config-host.h (if applicable)
  config_host_data.set('CONFIG_SDL_IMAGE', sdl_image.found())

  # Summary
  summary_info += {'SDL image support': sdl_image.found()}



Helper functions
----------------

The configure script provides a variety of helper functions to assist
developers in checking for system features:

`do_cc $ARGS...`
   Attempt to run the system C compiler passing it $ARGS...

`do_cxx $ARGS...`
   Attempt to run the system C++ compiler passing it $ARGS...

`compile_object $CFLAGS`
   Attempt to compile a test program with the system C compiler using
   $CFLAGS. The test program must have been previously written to a file
   called $TMPC.  The replacement in Meson is the compiler object `cc`,
   which has methods such as `cc.compiles()`,
   `cc.check_header()`, `cc.has_function()`.

`compile_prog $CFLAGS $LDFLAGS`
   Attempt to compile a test program with the system C compiler using
   $CFLAGS and link it with the system linker using $LDFLAGS. The test
   program must have been previously written to a file called $TMPC.
   The replacement in Meson is `cc.find_library()` and `cc.links()`.

`has $COMMAND`
   Determine if $COMMAND exists in the current environment, either as a
   shell builtin, or executable binary, returning 0 on success.  The
   replacement in Meson is `find_program()`.

`check_define $NAME`
   Determine if the macro $NAME is defined by the system C compiler

`check_include $NAME`
   Determine if the include $NAME file is available to the system C
   compiler.  The replacement in Meson is `cc.has_header()`.

`write_c_skeleton`
   Write a minimal C program main() function to the temporary file
   indicated by $TMPC

`feature_not_found $NAME $REMEDY`
   Print a message to stderr that the feature $NAME was not available
   on the system, suggesting the user try $REMEDY to address the
   problem.

`error_exit $MESSAGE $MORE...`
   Print $MESSAGE to stderr, followed by $MORE... and then exit from the
   configure script with non-zero status

`query_pkg_config $ARGS...`
   Run pkg-config passing it $ARGS. If QEMU is doing a static build,
   then --static will be automatically added to $ARGS


Stage 2: Meson
==============

The Meson build system is currently used to describe the build
process for:

1) executables, which include:

   - Tools - qemu-img, qemu-nbd, qga (guest agent), etc

   - System emulators - qemu-system-$ARCH

   - Userspace emulators - qemu-$ARCH

   - Unit tests

2) documentation

3) ROMs, which can be either installed as binary blobs or compiled

4) other data files, such as icons or desktop files

The source code is highly modularized, split across many files to
facilitate building of all of these components with as little duplicated
compilation as possible. The Meson "sourceset" functionality is used
to list the files and their dependency on various configuration  
symbols.

All executables are built by default, except for some `contrib/`
binaries that are known to fail to build on some platforms (for example
32-bit or big-endian platforms).  Tests are also built by default,
though that might change in the future.

Various subsystems that are common to both tools and emulators have
their own sourceset, for example `block_ss` for the block device subsystem,
`chardev_ss` for the character device subsystem, etc.  These sourcesets
are then turned into static libraries as follows::

    libchardev = static_library('chardev', chardev_ss.sources(),
                                name_suffix: 'fa',
                                build_by_default: false)

    chardev = declare_dependency(link_whole: libchardev)

As of Meson 0.55.1, the special `.fa` suffix should be used for everything
that is used with `link_whole`, to ensure that the link flags are placed
correctly in the command line.

Files linked into emulator targets there can be split into two distinct groups
of files, those which are independent of the QEMU emulation target and
those which are dependent on the QEMU emulation target.

In the target-independent set lives various general purpose helper code,
such as error handling infrastructure, standard data structures,
platform portability wrapper functions, etc. This code can be compiled
once only and the .o files linked into all output binaries.
Target-independent code lives in the `common_ss`, `softmmu_ss` and
`user_ss` sourcesets.  `common_ss` is linked into all emulators, `softmmu_ss`
only in system emulators, `user_ss` only in user-mode emulators.

In the target-dependent set lives CPU emulation, device emulation and
much glue code. This sometimes also has to be compiled multiple times,
once for each target being built.  Target-dependent files are included
in the `specific_ss` sourceset.

All binaries link with a static library `libqemuutil.a`, which is then
linked to all the binaries.  `libqemuutil.a` is built from several
sourcesets; most of them however host generated code, and the only two
of general interest are `util_ss` and `stub_ss`.

The separation between these two is purely for documentation purposes.
`util_ss` contains generic utility files.  Even though this code is only
linked in some binaries, sometimes it requires hooks only in some of
these and depend on other functions that are not fully implemented by
all QEMU binaries.  `stub_ss` links dummy stubs that will only be linked
into the binary if the real implementation is not present.  In a way,
the stubs can be thought of as a portable implementation of the weak
symbols concept.

The following files concur in the definition of which files are linked
into each emulator:

`default-configs/*.mak`
  The files under default-configs/ control what emulated hardware is built
  into each QEMU system and userspace emulator targets. They merely contain
  a list of config variable definitions like the machines that should be
  included. For example, default-configs/aarch64-softmmu.mak has::

    include arm-softmmu.mak
    CONFIG_XLNX_ZYNQMP_ARM=y
    CONFIG_XLNX_VERSAL=y

`*/Kconfig`
  These files are processed together with `default-configs/*.mak` and
  describe the dependencies between various features, subsystems and
  device models.  They are described in kconfig.rst.

These files rarely need changing unless new devices / hardware need to
be enabled for a particular system/userspace emulation target


Support scripts
---------------

Meson has a special convention for invoking Python scripts: if their
first line is `#! /usr/bin/env python3` and the file is *not* executable,
find_program() arranges to invoke the script under the same Python
interpreter that was used to invoke Meson.  This is the most common
and preferred way to invoke support scripts from Meson build files,
because it automatically uses the value of configure's --python= option.

In case the script is not written in Python, use a `#! /usr/bin/env ...`
line and make the script executable.

Scripts written in Python, where it is desirable to make the script
executable (for example for test scripts that developers may want to
invoke from the command line, such as tests/qapi-schema/test-qapi.py),
should be invoked through the `python` variable in meson.build. For
example::

  test('QAPI schema regression tests', python,
       args: files('test-qapi.py'),
       env: test_env, suite: ['qapi-schema', 'qapi-frontend'])

This is needed to obey the --python= option passed to the configure
script, which may point to something other than the first python3
binary on the path.


Stage 3: makefiles
==================

The use of GNU make is required with the QEMU build system.

The output of Meson is a build.ninja file, which is used with the Ninja
build system.  QEMU uses a different approach, where Makefile rules are
synthesized from the build.ninja file.  The main Makefile includes these
rules and wraps them so that e.g. submodules are built before QEMU.
The resulting build system is largely non-recursive in nature, in
contrast to common practices seen with automake.

Tests are also ran by the Makefile with the traditional `make check`
phony target, while benchmarks are run with `make bench`.  Meson test
suites such as `unit` can be ran with `make check-unit` too.  It is also
possible to run tests defined in meson.build with `meson test`.

Important files for the build system
====================================

Statically defined files
------------------------

The following key files are statically defined in the source tree, with
the rules needed to build QEMU. Their behaviour is influenced by a
number of dynamically created files listed later.

`Makefile`
  The main entry point used when invoking make to build all the components
  of QEMU. The default 'all' target will naturally result in the build of
  every component. Makefile takes care of recursively building submodules
  directly via a non-recursive set of rules.

`*/meson.build`
  The meson.build file in the root directory is the main entry point for the
  Meson build system, and it coordinates the configuration and build of all
  executables.  Build rules for various subdirectories are included in
  other meson.build files spread throughout the QEMU source tree.

`tests/Makefile.include`
  Rules for external test harnesses. These include the TCG tests,
  `qemu-iotests` and the Avocado-based acceptance tests.

`tests/docker/Makefile.include`
  Rules for Docker tests. Like tests/Makefile, this file is included
  directly by the top level Makefile, anything defined in this file will
  influence the entire build system.

`tests/vm/Makefile.include`
  Rules for VM-based tests. Like tests/Makefile, this file is included
  directly by the top level Makefile, anything defined in this file will
  influence the entire build system.

Dynamically created files
-------------------------

The following files are generated dynamically by configure in order to
control the behaviour of the statically defined makefiles. This avoids
the need for QEMU makefiles to go through any pre-processing as seen
with autotools, where Makefile.am generates Makefile.in which generates
Makefile.

Built by configure:

`config-host.mak`
  When configure has determined the characteristics of the build host it
  will write a long list of variables to config-host.mak file. This
  provides the various install directories, compiler / linker flags and a
  variety of `CONFIG_*` variables related to optionally enabled features.
  This is imported by the top level Makefile and meson.build in order to
  tailor the build output.

  config-host.mak is also used as a dependency checking mechanism. If make
  sees that the modification timestamp on configure is newer than that on
  config-host.mak, then configure will be re-run.

  The variables defined here are those which are applicable to all QEMU
  build outputs. Variables which are potentially different for each
  emulator target are defined by the next file...

`$TARGET-NAME/config-target.mak`
  TARGET-NAME is the name of a system or userspace emulator, for example,
  x86_64-softmmu denotes the system emulator for the x86_64 architecture.
  This file contains the variables which need to vary on a per-target
  basis. For example, it will indicate whether KVM or Xen are enabled for
  the target and any other potential custom libraries needed for linking
  the target.


Built by Meson:

`${TARGET-NAME}-config-devices.mak`
  TARGET-NAME is again the name of a system or userspace emulator. The
  config-devices.mak file is automatically generated by make using the
  scripts/make_device_config.sh program, feeding it the
  default-configs/$TARGET-NAME file as input.

`config-host.h`, `$TARGET-NAME/config-target.h`, `$TARGET-NAME/config-devices.h`
  These files are used by source code to determine what features
  are enabled.  They are generated from the contents of the corresponding
  `*.h` files using the scripts/create_config program. This extracts
  relevant variables and formats them as C preprocessor macros.

`build.ninja`
  The build rules.


Built by Makefile:

`Makefile.ninja`
  A Makefile include that bridges to ninja for the actual build.  The
  Makefile is mostly a list of targets that Meson included in build.ninja.

`Makefile.mtest`
  The Makefile definitions that let "make check" run tests defined in
  meson.build.  The rules are produced from Meson's JSON description of
  tests (obtained with "meson introspect --tests") through the script
  scripts/mtest2make.py.


Useful make targets
-------------------

`help`
  Print a help message for the most common build targets.

`print-VAR`
  Print the value of the variable VAR. Useful for debugging the build
  system.