Alyssa Ross <hi@alyssa.is> writes:

> Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On a Qubes OS VM (which doesn't have nested virtualization), building
>> release.nix fails because start-vmm-test (rightly) errors out.  Having
>> KVM be a *build*-time dependency of Spectrum OS seems rather strict,
>> especially because I can always copy the generated files over to another
>> machine and run them there.  In particular, I can copy the resulting image
>> and run it in QEMU.
>
> Ah, I've made a mistake here I think. KVM shouldn't be a build
> dependency, because the Scaleway aarch64 builders used to populate the
> binary cache don't have it.  It's only recently that release.nix
> includes start-vmm-test, so I haven't run those builders since, and
> hadn't noticed it.
>
> One option would be to introduce a build configuration[1] option that
> just disables any tests that need KVM.  Another would be to run those
> tests inside QEMU TCG if KVM is available, which would have the benefit
> of the tests still running (and not introducing more config options).  I
> wonder what the most lightweight way to optionally run some code in a
> TCG VM would be…
>
> [1]: https://spectrum-os.org/doc/development/build-configuration.html

Sadly the obvious solution of running it under QEMU user emulation
doesn't work…

https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/871