Re: [Qemu-devel] Allow ARMv7M to be started without a kernel

[Peter Maydell]

On 5 May 2011 09:23, Ben Leslie <address@hidden> wrote:
> FWIW, the reason why I'm not using -kernel is that the current
> way the armv7m code works, it expects the provided kernel to
> be a full flash image including appropriate vector table, whereas
> right now I just want to debug some stand-alone code, not the full
> system, which the above gdb approach works perfectly for.

It would probably be better for the -kernel option to honour the
entry point in the ELF file rather than insisting on full reset
(and to try to load the reset SP from the vector table but not
insist on that working). That is, we should support both "load
this ELF image which is a full system image with a vector table"
and "load this ELF image which is just a bare-metal (possibly
semihosting) application".

The combination of v7M reset with image loading and the possibility
of a debugger altering the pc/sp while the core is in reset is a bit
complicated, though :-)

As an aside: I think QEMU should have an option which is "just
load a plain ELF or raw binary, with no funny Linux-kernel-specific
behaviour" rather than overloading -kernel to mean "if it's a
raw image it's Linux and if it's an ELF file it's not".

-- PMM