The Virtual Target Environment allows the Qtopia developer or integrator to simulate running Qtopia on a Linux device. It uses User Mode Linux (UML) to provide a development environment for Qtopia closely resembling target hardware. In particular, Safe Execution features may be enabled in the virtual system, leaving the host system as a regular development workstation.
The Virtual Target Environment allows testing to occur on a development machine with the entire device running as a single process. This, in turn, allows testing of Qtopia in different file system configurations or with different kernels while still being able to run and test the software without additional hardware. QVFb is used to simulate the display and input devices. Benefits include being able to use QVFb to simulate the display and input devices; reset the state of the virtual target environment; perform entire device state diffs and limit device storage or RAM availability.
Note: this is not supported in Qtopia 4.1
Features
Device Compatibility
The VTE aims to be compatible as far as possible with a real device, ie the Greenphone.
The Virtual Target Environment includes the Linux kernel with LIDS patches (see SafeExecution), a Qtopia/SXE/LIDS file-system and policies.
This enables SXE with full LIDS support to be enabled for development testing on the desktop, without compiling LIDS into the host computers kernel.
Availability
At present the Virtual Target Environment is used internally but may be made available by request.
