files: 0.970 user-level: 0.953 semantic: 0.892 performance: 0.886 graphic: 0.872 mistranslation: 0.869 vnc: 0.841 architecture: 0.815 KVM: 0.804 debug: 0.784 device: 0.749 arm: 0.747 register: 0.722 PID: 0.709 permissions: 0.709 peripherals: 0.678 hypervisor: 0.677 x86: 0.674 assembly: 0.669 network: 0.669 kernel: 0.662 VMM: 0.622 risc-v: 0.594 boot: 0.587 socket: 0.573 TCG: 0.556 virtual: 0.514 ppc: 0.464 i386: 0.464 Cannot build qemu-5.0.0 from tarball Cannot build qemu 5.0.0 from the release tarball. Building from git-clone succeeds. After downloading and unpacking the 5.0.0 tarball, I typed the following: mkdir build cd build ../configure Then got the following error message: ERROR: missing file /home/uri/qemu-5.0.0/ui/keycodemapdb/README This is not a GIT checkout but module content appears to be missing. Do not use 'git archive' or GitHub download links to acquire QEMU source archives. Non-GIT builds are only supported with source archives linked from: https://www.qemu.org/download/#source Developers working with GIT can use scripts/archive-source.sh if they need to create valid source archives. It appears the ui/keycodemapdb is missing some files that are obtained from a git submodule in a git tree. Building from a git clone succeeds. Where did you download the tarball from? I just tried it again it didn't reproduce - all files were there. I don't have the original tarball that caused me to open this bug, as I just moved to git clone and continued with that. Appologies and please close this bug. I can confirm this bug. I've got this tarball : https://github.com/qemu/qemu/archive/refs/tags/v5.2.0.zip and then I've unpacked it on /opt and then I did : ./configure --prefix=/opt/qemu-5.2.0 --target-list=aarch64-softmmu,arm-softmmu --enable-guest-agent --enable-vnc --enable-vnc-jpeg --enable-vnc-png --enable-kvm --enable-spice --enable-sdl --enable-gtk --enable-virglrenderer --enable-opengl Using './build' as the directory for build output ERROR: missing file /opt/qemu-5.2.0/ui/keycodemapdb/README This is not a GIT checkout but module content appears to be missing. Do not use 'git archive' or GitHub download links to acquire QEMU source archives. Non-GIT builds are only supported with source archives linked from: https://www.qemu.org/download/#source Developers working with GIT can use scripts/archive-source.sh if they need to create valid source archives. You say "I've got this tarball : https://github.com/qemu/qemu/archive/refs/tags/v5.2.0.zip" You get an error message, and the message says: "Do not use 'git archive' or GitHub download links to acquire QEMU source archives". So, like it says, don't do that, go get your tarball from the QEMU website.