Re: [Qemu-devel] Random thought about qemu-user and Windows

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Jamie Lokier wrote:

> Paul Brook wrote:
> > - qemu-user only supports a very small subset of systems. e.g. it's
> > no use for linux->windows cross builds, which I expect to be the
> > most common case
> 
> Hmm...  I wonder how much would be required to emulate just the
> Windows system calls (used by normal applications)?  I.e. the same way
> qemu-user emulates the Linux and BSD system calls used by normal apps.
> 
> WINE does this, of course, but WINE is much bigger than that - it
> replaces all the Windows userspace libraries.  That's much bigger than
> just kernel behaviour.  I wonder how big the part needed just for
> Windows system calls would be.

You would still need all the proprietary libraries, such as kernel32.dll, 
user32.dll, ...

I guess, though, that the Ring3k project comes pretty close to emulating 
your idea: http://ring3k.org/

Keep in mind, translating syscalls from one architecture to another 
architecture is non-trivial (I once discussed this with a Solaris kernel 
developer, and he convinced me that it is a big task).

Ciao,
Dscho