[Qemu-devel] template for a script for running an ad-hoc QEMU image

[Peter Maydell]

In a conversation this week I mentioned the scripts I use for running
ad-hoc QEMU guest images that I have. The idea here is just that
by making sure that whenever I get a test image I set it up to be
run in the same way, I don't have the problem of trying to remember
how to run the guest if I come back to it after six months.
Here's an example -- I generally just copy-paste-and-edit an older
script when I get a new test image.

============
#!/bin/sh -e
TESTDIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")"; pwd)"
QEMU="$@"

${QEMU} -M lm3s6965evb -kernel "${TESTDIR}"/qs_ek-lm3s6965.bin
============

I put each guest image in its own directory, and the script is
always named "runme" and is executable. Then any test can be run with
path/to/test/runme path/to/qemu-system-whatever

There's no magic here but there are a couple of nice nuances here:
 * the rune at the top sets TESTDIR to the directory containing the
   script, regardless of what the current working directory is when
   you run the script; references to kernels, disk files, etc should
   then all use $TESTDIR rather than being absolute or relative paths
 * the use of $@ means you can also do

path/to/test/runme gdb --args path/to/qemu-system-whatever
path/to/test/runme valgrind path/to/qemu-system-whatever

and other similar things.

This doesn't fix any of the problems of using ad-hoc human-run
images for testing, but at least it makes them all be runnable in
the same way, reducing the barrier to randomly running one of them.

thanks
-- PMM