Re: [Qemu-devel] How to get started with the source code of Qemu?

[Bastian Koppelmann]

Hi Aaron,

On 10/06/2015 04:17 PM, Aaron Elkins wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am new to Qemu, and I’m extremely interested in understanding how the source 
> code of Qemu work. But after
> I downloaded the whole project, I just lost in it, the project is too large for 
> me to get started.
>
> If anyone here can point me to some useful document or some guides, to make me 
> get started in understanding
> the source code?

it depends of the area of your interest. Or do you seek a general 
overview regarding QEMU?

When I started with QEMU, I picked some part that looked interesting, 
looked at an interesting sounding function, added a breakpoint in gdb, 
and slowly stepped through it in order to understand it. Looking at the 
backtrace helps to see where this function was called to find more 
interesting function for the breakpoint stepping.

Sadly there is not a lot of documentation today. For some areas you have 
good chance, if you look into the docs/ directory. But mostly the 
sourcecode is the documentation. We talked about that issue on the QEMU 
Summit 2015 and would like to change it. However it depends on how 
people are willing to write high level documentation.

If you are interested in the tcg-frontend part of QEMU, I can give you 
some hints.
> What knowledge are required to understand the source code?
>
> BTW, i know this project is not that simple to understand, but I would like to 
> try, even I need to know a lot
> of other knowledge before that, but at least let me get started.
>
> Thanks
>
> -Aaron
Cheers,
Bastian