[Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] README: fill out some useful quickstart information

[Daniel P. Berrange]

The README file is usually the first thing consulted when a user
or developer obtains a copy of the QEMU source. The current QEMU
README is lacking immediately useful information and so not very
friendly for first time encounters. It either redirects users to
qemu-doc.html (which does not exist until they've actually
compiled QEMU), or the website (which assumes the user has
convenient internet access at time of reading).

This fills out the README file as simple quick-start guide on
the topics of building source, submitting patches, licensing
and how to contact the QEMU community. It does not intend to be
comprehensive, instead referring people to an appropriate web
page to obtain more detailed information. The intent is to give
users quick guidance to get them going in the right direction.

Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden>
---

Changed in v2:

 - Rewrote initial introduction to explain userspace emulators
   as well as system emulators
 - Reformatted to 72 char line width
 - Illustrate VPATH build instead of in-tree build
 - Remove duplicated licensing info pointing to LICENSE file

I've not yet attempted to deal with the possible qemu-tech.texi
changes discussed in the previous thread, as I figure that's best
done separately.

 README | 108 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 106 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/README b/README
index c7c990d..819c985 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,3 +1,107 @@
-Read the documentation in qemu-doc.html or on http://wiki.qemu-project.org
+         QEMU README
+        ===========
 
-- QEMU team
+QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
+virtualizer.
+
+QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
+need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
+it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
+and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
+hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
+near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
+capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
+board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
+
+QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
+and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
+architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
+different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
+involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
+
+QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
+by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
+It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
+layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
+It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
+open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
+
+QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
+version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
+
+
+Building
+========
+
+QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
+Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
+of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
+
+  mkdir build
+  cd build
+  ./configure
+  make
+
+Complete details of the process for building and configuring QEMU for
+all supported host platforms can be found in the qemu-tech.html file.
+Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Linux
+  http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/W32
+
+
+Submitting patches
+==================
+
+The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
+
+   git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
+
+When submitting patches, the preferred approach is to use 'git
+format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
address@hidden mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
+a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
+guidelines set out in the HACKING and CODING_STYLE files.
+
+Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
+the QEMU website
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
+
+
+Bug reporting
+=============
+
+The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
+found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
+should be reported via:
+
+  https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
+
+If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
+is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
+the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
+reported via launchpad.
+
+For additional information on bug reporting consult:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/ReportABug
+
+
+Contact
+=======
+
+The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
+main methods being email and IRC
+
+ - address@hidden
+   http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
+ - #qemu on irc.oftc.net
+
+Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
+found online via the QEMU website:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/StartHere
+
+-- End
-- 
2.4.3