ChangeLog/8.1

System emulation

Removed features and incompatible changes

Consult the 'Removed features' page for details of suggested replacement functionality.

New deprecated options and features

Consult the "Deprecated Features" chapter of the QEMU System Emulation User's Guide for further details of the deprecations and their suggested replacements.

• The "-singlestep" command line option is deprecated, as it was very misleadingly named. Its replacement is "-one-insn-per-tb" (for the user-mode emulator) or "-accel one-insn-per-tb=on" (for the system-mode emulator)

Arm

• New architectural features now emulated:
  • FEAT_PAN3 (Support for SCTLR_ELx.EPAN)
• Pointer-authentication information is now reported to the gdbstub (a GDB 13 or later will produce better backtraces when pauth is in use by the guest)
• Orangepi-PC, Cubieboard: Add Allwinner WDT watchdog emulation
• mcimxd7-sabre, mcimx6ul-evk: The second ethernet controller PHY is now usable

Device emulation and assignment

TPM

• Added TPM TIS I2C device model

Audio

• new PipeWire audio backend (-audiodev pipewire)

Character devices

• It's now possible to specify the input independently from the output with -chardev file (e.g. -chardev file,id=repro,path=/dev/null,input-path=input.txt)

Build Information

Build Dependencies

• Starting with QEMU 8.1, only Python 3.8 and newer will be supported (3.7 might work but it is not included in any of the environments that we run CI with).
• new pipewire audio backend requires libpipewire (currently >= 0.3.60)

Known issues

• see Planning/8.1