diff --git a/scripts/clean-includes b/scripts/clean-includes
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..1af1f824b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/clean-includes
@@ -0,0 +1,109 @@
+#!/bin/sh -e
+#
+# Clean up QEMU #include lines by ensuring that qemu/osdep.h
+# is the first include listed.
+#
+# Copyright (c) 2015 Linaro Limited
+#
+# Authors:
+#  Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
+#
+# This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2
+# or (at your option) any later version. See the COPYING file in
+# the top-level directory.
+
+# Usage:
+#   clean-includes [--git subjectprefix] file ...
+#
+# If the --git subjectprefix option is given, then after making
+# the changes to the files this script will create a git commit
+# with the subject line "subjectprefix: Clean up includes"
+# and a boilerplate commit message.
+
+# This script requires Coccinelle to be installed.
+
+
+# The following one-liner may be handy for finding files to run this on.
+# However some caution is required regarding files that might be part
+# of the guest agent or standalone tests.
+
+# for i in `git ls-tree --name-only HEAD`  ; do test -f $i && \
+#   grep -E '^# *include' $i | head -1 | grep 'osdep.h' ; test $? != 0 && \
+#   echo $i ; done
+
+
+GIT=no
+
+if [ $# -ne 0 ] && [ "$1" = "--git" ]; then
+    if [ $# -eq 1 ]; then
+        echo "--git option requires an argument"
+        exit 1
+    fi
+    GITSUBJ="$2"
+    GIT=yes
+    shift
+    shift
+fi
+
+if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
+    echo "Usage: clean-includes [--git subjectprefix] foo.c ..."
+    echo "(modifies the files in place)"
+    exit 1
+fi
+
+# Annoyingly coccinelle won't read a scriptfile unless its
+# name ends '.cocci', so write it out to a tempfile with the
+# right kind of name.
+COCCIFILE="$(mktemp --suffix=.cocci)"
+
+trap 'rm -f -- "$COCCIFILE"' INT TERM HUP EXIT
+
+cat >"$COCCIFILE" <<EOT
+@@
+@@
+
+(
++ #include "qemu/osdep.h"
+ #include "..."
+|
++ #include "qemu/osdep.h"
+ #include <...>
+)
+EOT
+
+
+for f in "$@"; do
+  # First, use coccinelle to add qemu/osdep.h before the first existing include
+  # (this will add two lines if the file uses both "..." and <...> #includes,
+  # but we will remove the extras in the next step)
+  spatch  --in-place --no-show-diff --cocci-file "$COCCIFILE" "$f"
+
+  # Now remove any duplicate osdep.h includes
+  perl -n -i  -e 'print if !/#include "qemu\/osdep.h"/ || !$n++;' "$f"
+
+  # Remove includes that osdep.h already provides
+  perl -n -i -e 'print if !/\s*#\s*include\s*(["<][^>"]*[">])/ ||
+                          ! (grep { $_ eq $1 } qw (
+           "config-host.h" "qemu/compiler.h" "config.h"
+           <stdarg.h> <stddef.h> <stdbool.h> <stdint.h> <sys/types.h>
+           <stdlib.h> <stdio.h> <string.h> <strings.h> <inttypes.h>
+           <limits.h> <unistd.h> <time.h> <ctype.h> <errno.h> <fcntl.h>
+           <sys/stat.h> <sys/time.h> <assert.h> <signal.h>
+           "glib-compat.h" "qapi/error.h"
+            ))' "$f"
+
+done
+
+if [ "$GIT" = "yes" ]; then
+    git add -- "$@"
+    git commit --signoff -F - <<EOF
+$GITSUBJ: Clean up includes
+
+Clean up includes so that osdep.h is included first and headers
+which it implies are not included manually.
+
+This commit was created with scripts/clean-includes.
+
+EOF
+
+fi