files: 0.970 other: 0.908 semantic: 0.892 performance: 0.886 graphic: 0.872 vnc: 0.841 KVM: 0.804 debug: 0.784 device: 0.749 PID: 0.709 permissions: 0.709 network: 0.669 boot: 0.587 socket: 0.573 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.