[Freedombox-discuss] Dreamplug emulator or qemu?

[Nick M. Daly]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:00:58 +0100, Björn wrote:

> Is there an emulator for the Dreamplug so I can do some basic testing
> myself?  Since I don't have a Dreamplug, and noone has offered to test
> for me, a emulator looks like the third best thing if it exists.
> Another alternative could be qemu; would that work?

I do all my testing with a normal VirtualBox VM.  It's just much faster
than developing on the plug itself.  I install Debian Testing (Wheezy)
to the VM image, and it makes a fairly effective testbed.  If you want
to work off of the best approximation we have, try installing the
FreedomMaker image [0] to the virtual harddrive.

Unless you're actually compiling code (instead of using an interpreted
language), the fact that you're faking it in VirtualBox VM doesn't
matter: (processor) architectures are irrelevant to Debian, all the
underlying packages should work the same way.

If you want to get into the details, there is some stuff you'll miss
because you're running on a VM:

- The really screwy setup and UBoot problems (that should be fixed in
  someone's FreedomMaker repository, I don't recall which).

- Multiple wired ethernet interfaces and the wireless UAP.  You'll have
  one wired interface that you can bridge to your host system.  Good
  enough for /most/ testing.

- The excitement of having a headless system that requires a JTAG to
  break into when the wired interfaces don't come up properly.

In short, aside from having a different number of ethernet interfaces,
you aren't missing anything substantial, it's actually easier to use a
VM.  For compiled code to work on an actual Dreamplug, you'll need to
cross-compile it, and you'll need to find somebody else to help you with
that.

Nick

0: http://freedomboxfoundation.org/code/