Re: [Qemu-discuss] QEMU singlestep

[Peter Maydell]

On 28 May 2014 09:58, Radu Velea <address@hidden> wrote:
> I've been using QEMU in user mode to run an executable with debug mode and
> I've noticed that the number of assembly instructions differs from one
> runtime to another, even for a trivial "hello world". Is there an
> explanation for this?
>
> qemu-aarch64 -singlestep -d in_asm hello_world.exe
> has fewer instructions than
> qemu-aarch64 -d in_asm hello_world.exe

Singlestep mode means (among other things) that we only
ever translate one instruction at a time. So the trace of
instructions translated with it enabled won't show the tail
ends of blocks which we didn't execute completely
(eg when we took a conditional branch).

Note also that -d in_asm shows you instructions *translated*,
not instructions *executed*. Translated instructions may never
be executed (as you've seen), and translated instructions may
be executed more than once (in which case there's no in_asm
tracing for the second time they're executed).

thanks
-- PMM