Hi,
I'm working on a project that wants to replace houdini (ARM-to-x86 translation layer for Android from Intel) with a free open-source implementation. I'm trying to leverage qemu user-mode to achieve that, but it requires code changes to allow executing dynamically loaded functions instead of running a single executable.
In a nutshell, using ideas from unicorn-engine, I've enhanced CPUARMState with a stop address. Whenever this address is encountered in the translator, it generates a YIELD exception, which then makes the cpu_loop to exit.
It works fine for simple cases, but I'm having trouble with multi-threading aspect. Threads created from the native/ARM side do seem to work properly. The problem is when a new Java thread (not created from native/ARM) attempts to execute native code. The QEMU engine has been initialized in the main thread, but new Java threads do not have access to thread-local variable thread_cpu.
I've tried (maybe naively) to recreate what the clone syscall is doing to create a new CPUState/CPUArchState object, usable from the new thread, but executing any ARM code quickly lead to a crash. I suppose I'm doing something wrong, or missing something to properly initiale a new cpu. I'm hoping that someone could help me solve this problem.
I've attached the current QEMU patch I'm using, most of the Android glue layer is in linux-user/main.c. It contains a set of utility functions that my Android native bridge implementation is using.
qemu-android.diff.bz2