name: working-with-qemu description: Use when building, launching, debugging, or capturing screenshots of PebbleOS under QEMU.
Working with QEMU
PebbleOS can run under a custom QEMU version shipped with the PebbleOS SDK.
Configure & build
./pbl configure --board $BOARD
./pbl build
where $BOARD is any of the qemu_* boards:
qemu_emeryqemu_flintqemu_gabbro
QEMU boards target a specific platform, e.g. qemu_emery targets the Emery platform, which is the platform used by Pebble Time 2.
Launch
./pbl qemu
The launched QEMU exposes:
- Interactive QEMU monitor on the launching terminal (
-monitor stdio) - Programmatic socket monitor (
-monitor unix:build/qemu-mon.sock) - Serial console over TCP on
localhost:12345(console) andlocalhost:12344(pebble-tool)
UART1 output is also captured to build/uart1.log.
Console
./pbl console
Requires QEMU to be running. Uses the TCP serial port to connect to the QEMU console, and provides a prompt for sending commands and receiving responses.
Screenshot
./pbl screenshot # defaults to build/screenshot.png
./pbl screenshot --screenshot-output /tmp/foo.png
Requires QEMU to be running. Uses the programmatic socket monitor to capture a screenshot of the QEMU display and save it to disk. Useful to validate or iterate on UI changes.
Interaction
Keyboard input is captured by QEMU, so you can interact with the PebbleOS UI.
Keys can also be send programmatically over the socket monitor using the sendkey command.
They key mapping is:
| QEMU key | PebbleOS key |
|---|---|
left |
back |
right |
select |
up |
up |
down |
down |