[Qemu-devel] qemu for x86 plugins on PPC?

[Qemu-devel] qemu for x86 plugins on PPC?

[Wim Vanderbauwhede]

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Hi qemu-guru's,

Would it be possible to use qemu to have x86 plugins work in a PPC
browser? The plugins for mozilla are .so shared libraries, so I imagine
that it should be possible based on usermode qemu-i386.
A Flash-plugin for mozilla on PPC is a kind of holy grail, it would be
great if qemu could provide this.

Wim

-- 
If it's pointless, what's the point?
If there is a point to it, what's the point?
(Tibor Fischer, "The Thought Gang")

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Re: [Qemu-devel] qemu for x86 plugins on PPC?

[Paul Brook]

On Tuesday 24 August 2004 15:40, Wim Vanderbauwhede wrote:
> Hi qemu-guru's,
>
> Would it be possible to use qemu to have x86 plugins work in a PPC
> browser? The plugins for mozilla are .so shared libraries, so I imagine
> that it should be possible based on usermode qemu-i386.
> A Flash-plugin for mozilla on PPC is a kind of holy grail, it would be
> great if qemu could provide this.

I don't think this is going to work.
Shared objects (.so) are quite tightly tied into the main executable. For 
example they're likely to share memory structures, with no cleanly defined 
interface between them.  You're effectively asking qemu link together code 
compiled for two (very) different targets into a single executable.

By contrast the linux syscall layer emulated by qemu-user is clean, well 
defined, and relatively simple.

However, you should be able to run x86 mozilla with x86 plugins under qemu on 
a PPC machine. I haven't tried this.

Paul

Re: [Qemu-devel] qemu for x86 plugins on PPC?

[Wim Vanderbauwhede]

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On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 15:54, Paul Brook wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 August 2004 15:40, Wim Vanderbauwhede wrote:
> > Hi qemu-guru's,
> >
> > Would it be possible to use qemu to have x86 plugins work in a PPC
> > browser? The plugins for mozilla are .so shared libraries, so I imagine
> > that it should be possible based on usermode qemu-i386.
> > A Flash-plugin for mozilla on PPC is a kind of holy grail, it would be
> > great if qemu could provide this.
> 
> I don't think this is going to work.
> Shared objects (.so) are quite tightly tied into the main executable. For 
> example they're likely to share memory structures, with no cleanly defined 
> interface between them.  You're effectively asking qemu link together code 
> compiled for two (very) different targets into a single executable.
OK, I see. Pity.
> 
> By contrast the linux syscall layer emulated by qemu-user is clean, well 
> defined, and relatively simple.
> 
> However, you should be able to run x86 mozilla with x86 plugins under qemu on 
> a PPC machine. I haven't tried this.
I have tried this. It used to work with qemu 0.5.5 and glibc 2.3.1. I
had firefox with flash, acrobat reader and the stand-alone flash player,
all working well. However qemu 0.6 broke most of this (only acrobat
reader still working), and upgrading to glibc2.3.1 (and probably a
higher gcc as well) just broke everything. At the moment, the only thing
that works under usermode qemu on PPC is ash.static. Even /bin/true
fails with a segmentation fault. 
I would really appreicate if someone could look into this, and I guess
other PPC users would be glad too.

Thanks,

Wim

> 
> Paul
-- 
If it's pointless, what's the point?
If there is a point to it, what's the point?
(Tibor Fischer, "The Thought Gang")

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Re: [Qemu-devel] qemu for x86 plugins on PPC?

[Ronnie Misra]

On Aug 24, 2004, at 7:54 AM, Paul Brook wrote:

> On Tuesday 24 August 2004 15:40, Wim Vanderbauwhede wrote:
>> Hi qemu-guru's,
>>
>> Would it be possible to use qemu to have x86 plugins work in a PPC
>> browser? The plugins for mozilla are .so shared libraries, so I 
>> imagine
>> that it should be possible based on usermode qemu-i386.
>> A Flash-plugin for mozilla on PPC is a kind of holy grail, it would be
>> great if qemu could provide this.
>
> I don't think this is going to work.
> Shared objects (.so) are quite tightly tied into the main executable. 
> For
> example they're likely to share memory structures, with no cleanly 
> defined
> interface between them.  You're effectively asking qemu link together 
> code
> compiled for two (very) different targets into a single executable.
>
> By contrast the linux syscall layer emulated by qemu-user is clean, 
> well
> defined, and relatively simple.
>
> However, you should be able to run x86 mozilla with x86 plugins under 
> qemu on
> a PPC machine. I haven't tried this.

It might be true that shared objects are tightly tied into the 
executable in the general case, but in the specific case of mozilla 
plugins, there is a defined interface between the plugin and the 
executable - the Netscape plugin API:

<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/>

Crossover has a product to let x86-linux users use Windows plugins in 
Mozilla, and it works well enough to let you use the Windows QuickTime 
plugin...

Ronnie