Re: [Qemu-discuss] qemu -curses in MS Windows?

[Jakob Bohm]

On 10/9/2012 6:11 PM, Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
> I'd like to use qemu in curses mode, but the main qemu Windows port 
> <http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/%7Eqemu-win/> doesn't appear to support the 
> option. Is it available under a different command line flag? Is there 
> another Windows port of qemu that does have curses mode?
The underlying problem is that Windows does terminal controls very
differently from *N*X:

On *N*X, the fundamental model is that programs send control codes
to a remote terminal hooked up to a serial cable via a modem, and
other terminals (such as xterm and the Linux console) emulate that.
A library called curses helps programs figure out which terminal
brand and model (such as DEC model VT100 or Linux model console)
is connected and which escape codes to send.

On Windows, the fundamental model is that the only terminal
available is the built in "console" and programs call specific
API functions to manipulate it if they need more than printing
out plain text to stdout.

This makes it hard to port curses based code to native Windows
code.

On the other hand, with the exception of 32 bit Windows 2003 and
older, the Windows terminal console is just a gui implementation
anyway, so letting qemu just emulate the vga text mode graphically
should be good enough for most uses on Windows.

P.S.

Environments such as cygwin send all terminal stdout to their
own terminal emulator and then configure a ported curses library
to know the escape sequences they emulate, which is roundabout,
but works for many simpler programs, however running qemul-win32
under cygwin would be bad for the porting of most other parts
of qemu, so is not really an option.

Enjoy

Jakob
--
Jakob Bohm, CIO, Partner, WiseMo A/S.  http://www.wisemo.com
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