Lazarus for Windows on aarch64 (ARM64) - Native Compiler

[msintle]

So happy to see we have precipitated some progress!

[msintle]

Job is still open and accepting bids for anyone who would like to give it a go!

[msintle]

Good news, everyone!

My company is now sponsoring CoPilot credits for this repo:

https://github.com/InstallAware-Software/FPCSource

The goal of this repo, forked from the original, is for everyone to contribute - so we can get aarch64 Windows support in FPC/Lazarus working, for once and for all!

- Community effort.
- Anyone can join.
- Free beers upon success!

Join now, get free CoPilot access, and let's ship this thing!!!

[DonAlfredo]

That sounds good and interesting !
I have joined.
Lets see how AI and some people willing to spend some time and effort can reach.
Thanks !!

[DonAlfredo]

Success !!!
Fpcupdeluxe is now running native on Win64/ARM64 !!
See included screenshot.
Will follow up with Lazarus.

[Thaddy]

Quite some achievement. Congrats!
(Wonder where you got the hardware, though: here it is prohibitly - to me, more  expensive than Apple - expensive for what it  offers. (nl).)

[msintle]

Success !!!
Fpcupdeluxe is now running native on Win64/ARM64 !!
See included screenshot.
Will follow up with Lazarus.

Congratulations!!!

[msintle]

Quite some achievement. Congrats!
(Wonder where you got the hardware, though: here it is prohibitly - to me, more  expensive than Apple - expensive for what it  offers. (nl).)

If you are able to afford Macs, just use a Windows 11 aarch64 VM inside your Mac.

Creating Windows aarch64 VMs (via Hyper-V) inside native Windows 11 aarch64 (running on bare metal aarch64 hardware) is actually substantially harder (and a far worse user experience) than running Windows 11 aarch64 VMs on Mac "Apple Silicon" hardware.

[Thaddy]

You know I have M4 hardware...

[msintle]

You know I have M4 hardware...

Then you are good to go!

Just use VMware or Parallels - and your hypervisored Windows 11 will run as competitively fast (even with GPU support) as running Windows 11 on bare metal!

[DonAlfredo]

Update FPC.
I have just build a brand new FPC trunk compiler on windows arm64 itself !!
Used a cross-compiled bootstrapper.
Working flawless.

Update Lazarus.
Lazarus has many many things like this:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1.     {$ifdef cpui386}
2.     with TDbgWinThread(AThread).FCurrentContext^.def do DebugLn(Format('DS: 0x%x, ES: 0x%x, FS: 0x%x, GS: 0x%x', [SegDs, SegEs, SegFs, SegGs]));
3.     {$else}
4.     with TDbgWinThread(AThread).FCurrentContext^.def do DebugLn(Format('SegDS: 0x%4.4x, SegES: 0x%4.4x, SegFS: 0x%4.4x, SegGS: 0x%4.4x', [SegDs, SegEs, SegFs, SegGs]));
5.     {$endif}
6.  

So, Lazarus assumes that anything other than win32 (i386) is x86_64 on Windows.
Now that FPC works well on Windows ARM64, this needs change.
Any Lazarus devs out there willing to assist ?
Its a lot of work.

[AlexTP]

Main problem of FPC on win64-aarch64 were non working exceptions, as I understand. Is it fixed?

[DonAlfredo]

Nothing fixed. All was there already !!
All gory ARM64-details were already implemented by the FPC devs.
Just a very small alignment issue regarding threadvars.
https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41428
Not easy to spot and find I must say ... ;-)

[AlexTP]

Great findings! Thank you very much, I wait when I can make my text editor for win64-arm64.

[Fred vS]

Success !!!
Fpcupdeluxe is now running native on Win64/ARM64 !!
See included screenshot.
Will follow up with Lazarus.

Wow congratulation champion!

Has anyone ever been able to install Windows 10/11 on an RPi (3 if possible)? If so, any comments on how to install it are welcome?
Similarly, how to install FPC on RPi/Windows.