[Qemu-devel] [PATCH] README: fill out some useful quickstart information

[Daniel P. Berrange]

The README file is usually the first thing consulted when a user
or developer obtains a copy of the QEMU source. The current QEMU
README is lacking immediately useful information and so not very
friendly for first time encounters. It either redirects users to
qemu-doc.html (which does not exist until they've actually
compiled QEMU), or the website (which assumes the user has
convenient internet access at time of reading).

This fills out the README file as simple quick-start guide on
the topics of building source, submitting patches, licensing
and how to contact the QEMU community. It does not intend to be
comprehensive, instead referring people to an appropriate web
page to obtain more detailed information. The intent is to give
users quick guidance to get them going in the right direction.

Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden>
---
 README | 108 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 106 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/README b/README
index c7c990d..71142c3 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,3 +1,107 @@
-Read the documentation in qemu-doc.html or on http://wiki.qemu-project.org
+         QEMU README
+        ===========
 
-- QEMU team
+QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. When used
+as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine
+(e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic
+translation, it achieves very good performance. When used as a virtualizer,
+QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on
+the host CPU. QEMU supports virtualization when executing under the Xen
+hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux.
+
+
+Building
+========
+
+QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern Linux
+platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety of other
+UNIX targets. The simple process to build QEMU is
+
+  ./configure
+  make
+  sudo make install
+
+The configure script supports a number of arguments to turn on/off various
+optional features. These can be seen with "configure --help".
+
+For additional information on building QEMU for Linux and Windows consult:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Linux
+  http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/W32
+
+
+Submitting patches
+==================
+
+The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
+
+   git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
+
+When submitting patches, the preferred approach is to use 'git format-patch'
+and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the address@hidden
+mailing list. All patches submitted must contain a 'Signed-off-by' line from
+the author.
+
+For additional information on submitting patches consult:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
+
+
+Bug reporting
+=============
+
+The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
+found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
+should be reported via:
+
+  https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
+
+If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
+is preferrable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If the
+bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be reported
+via launchpad.
+
+For additional information on bug reporting consult:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/ReportABug
+
+
+Licensing
+=========
+
+  - QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License, version 
2.
+
+  - Parts of QEMU have specific licenses which are compatible with the GNU
+    General Public License, version 2. Hence each source file contains its own
+    licensing information. Source files with no licensing information are
+    released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your
+    option) any later version. As of July 2013, contributions under version
+    2 of the GNU General Public License (and no later version) are only
+    accepted for the following files or directories: bsd-user/, linux-user/,
+    hw/misc/vfio.c, hw/xen/xen_pt*.
+
+  - The Tiny Code Generator (TCG) is released under the BSD license (see
+    license headers in files).
+
+  - QEMU is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard.
+
+For additional information on QEMU licensing consult:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/License
+
+
+Contact
+=======
+
+The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two main
+methods being E-Mail and IRC
+
+ - address@hidden (http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel)
+ - #qemu on irc.oftc.net
+
+For additional information on contacted the community consult:
+
+  http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/StartHere
+
+-- End
-- 
2.4.3