Hi,

I have developed a DLL for x64 Windows and compiled with fpc 3.2.2. I would like to compile the same code for ARM64 running Windows. I need this to support the MS Surface devices.

Even though the platform list of the Lazarus Wiki

https://wiki.freepascal.org/Platform_list

lists "Windows for ARM64" under "Supported targets for AArch64" I did neither find a suitable cross-compiler for download, nor did I find any hints on how to compile for this platform in the documentation.

Is there a release plan for an fpc version for ARM64 on Windows? When can I expect a suitable compiler to come?

Best regards,

Wolfgang

Windows on AArch64 is currently only supported in main thus you need to compile it yourself (see also
https://lists.freepascal.org/pipermail/fpc-announce/2020-April/000614.html ). Also there are still some errors for which the origins haven't been found yet, so your mileage may vary...

Regards,
Sven

Le 20/06/2022 à 23:53, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal a écrit :

You might also try this "completely untested" cross-installer: ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/snapshot/trunk/aarch64-win64/fpc-3.3.1.aarch64-win64.built.on.x86_64-linux.tar.gz See:
ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/snapshot/trunk/aarch64-win64/README-fpc-3.3.1.aarch64-win64.built.on.x86_64-linux

Pierre

Hi all,

Pierre Muler wrote

You might also try this "completely untested" cross-installer: ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/snapshot/trunk/aarch64-win64/fpc-3.3.1.aarch64-win64.built.on.x86_64-linux.tar.gz

Thank you for pointing me to this installer. Since I am a Windows XP user and also blind, it would be too much effort for me to install a Linux machine or compile the compiler myself. I would rather wait until a compiler for the Windows host is available.

If anyone has one, please let me know.

Regards,

Wolfgang

Hello,

this is normally a native aarch64-win64 compiler,
not a cross-compiler package to be installed on linux.

Note however that, as stated below, this was never tested. It will also not run on a Windows XP, unless
you have an aarch64-windows_XP, but I am not aware of the existence of such machines.

Regards,

Pierre

Le 21/06/2022 à 11:14, Wolfgang Hubert a écrit :

Pierre Muller wrote

Le 20/06/2022 à 23:53, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal a écrit : > Am 20.06.2022 um 12:34 schrieb Wolfgang Hubert via fpc-pascal:

Hi Pierre (and others ;-) ),

.
.

I just tried to follow the advice above. Compiling the cross-compiler (Win32 hosted) is no problem using the fullcycle target (obviously, I could build just the particular compiler for AArch64 instead of all of them, but that isn't important) - so far so good. However, it already fails when trying to build the aarch64-win64 rtl using this cross-compiler, because the compiler complains about missing assembler aarch64-win64-clang.exe. Do we provide (compiled) win32 or win64 hosted binutils providing support for aarch64-win64 target? FWIW, I checked the contrib directory on our FTP, but didn't find anything useful in this regard there either.

In order to check that, I downloaded your "cross-installer" mentioned above, but it contains win32 hosted builds of binutils named x86_64-win64-*.exe, i.e. supposedly aimed at targetting Win64 on x86_64, but not usable together with the included ppca64.exe binary (because the included ppca64.exe binary is a native compiler for aarch64-win64, whereas the binutils only run under win32/win64; moreover, they do not fit the subdirectory bin/aarch64-win64/ included in the .tar.gz file). And just as a funny fact, the included x86_64-win64-objdump.exe does not even recognize the AArch64 architecture ;-) (tried with the ppca64.exe binary) - not surprisingly, because it's version 2.26 compiled in January 2016.

Conclusion:

1) Packaging of the "cross-installer" mentioned above should be revised (specifically, the binutils should be replaced with something more appropriate).

2) We should provide the appropriate cross-binutils, otherwise even suggesting people to compile the ppca64.exe compiler from trunk/main FPC themselves doesn't help much.

3) It might be time for updating the provided Win32 binutils as well - version 2.28 of objdump included with the latest release of FPC (and also included in the fpcbuild repository in both the win32 and win64 subdirectories under install/) doesn't support/recognize the AArch64 architecture yet.

Tomas

Tomas Hajny via fpc-pascal schrieb am
Di., 21. Juni 2022, 18:08:

As is mentioned in my announcement mail for the target it requires clang as assembler, not GNU binutils. And we don't *want* to ship that as clang provides nice installers themselves.

Regards,
Sven

ppc ~= .pp compiler. All of our compiler binaries start with ppc. The PowerPC compiler is ppcppc.

Jonas

Sven Barth wrote

Tomas Hajny via fpc-pascal schrieb am Di., 21. Juni 2022, 18:08:

Hi Sven,

.
.

I can't find any clang installers. Do you mean the 263 MB installer of the whole LLVM
(https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-14.0.5/LLVM-14.0.5-win32.exe or
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-14.0.5/LLVM-14.0.5-win64.exe)? Moreover, that wouldn't provide the executable aarch64-win64-clang.exe expected by FPC, would it (unlike the contributed cross binutils provided by Pierre and some others for other architectures)? I believe that we should either reconsider the idea of not providing such binaries ourselves, or change the compiler so that it can invoke the tools as installed by the installer (or to provide detailed steps necessary for making this to work as the very least, but my personal opinion is that this last option wouldn't be the right thing to do in this case).

Tomas

Tomas Hajny schrieb am Mi., 22. Juni 2022, 10:57:

Yes, exactly those and that's the reason why I don't want to distribute them.

Moreover, that wouldn't provide the executable aarch64-win64-clang.exe expected by FPC, would it (unlike the contributed cross binutils provided by Pierre and some others for other architectures)?

As I have also written in my announcement mail one is supposed to use -XP to set the binutils prefix to empty.

I believe

The compiler already can invoke clang.exe as is if one configures it correctly. One needs to ensure anyway that clang.exe is either in %PATH% or that the path is provided to FPC with -FD. Both options can be added to fpc.cfg.

Regards,
Sven

There actually is a 64-bit version of xp, but it's not compatible with very much.  Apparently, it didn't have an emulator in it, so running 32-bit software wasn't something it did by default.  I never did figure out if it could be made to run 32-bit software or not, I just gave up on it, (more precisely, the person I installed it for gave up on it), because everything they tried to install wouldn't work, because it wasn't 64-bit.

Even so, I have no idea if the FPC cross compiler would work on such a machine anyway, and I no longer have a machine on which I can test said version of windows anyhow, (come to think of it, I don't think I have the install disk for it anymore either), so that will have to remain a mystery.

I may be wrong, but I believe that the original poster meant that he was using a "regular" (32-bit) version of WinXP on x86 and wanted to cross-compile from there to aarch64-win64.

Tomas

Hi all,

thank you for your thoughts and suggestions on this topic.

Tomas Hajny wrote

I may be wrong, but I believe that the original poster meant that he was using a "regular" (32-bit) version of WinXP on x86 and wanted to cross-compile from there to aarch64-win64.

Yes, you are right. I have a XP machine as well as Windows 10, both 32-bit and 64-bit. So one of these should be the host. But it must be a cross-compiler for the ARM64 target, since I cannot operate a ARM64 machine running Windows. It is not accessible to me. It is a bit like the hen/egg-problem.

I am using fpc 3.2.2 on my XP machine (32-bit) successfully for building 32-bit and 64-bit DLLs for Windows x86/x64. My goal is to do the same for the ARM64 target.

Now I think of porting my pascal code to C++, installing MS Visual Studio and compiling it there.
I am not a compiler compiler and will not be able to finalize or test a cross-compiler before using it.

Best regards,

Wolfgang

Travis Siegel via fpc-pascal schrieb am
Do., 23. Juni 2022, 20:08:

Pierre's remark was about an XP running on Aarch64 (which definitely does not exist), not an x86_64 XP.

Also assuming you mean the x86_64 version of XP and not the IA64 (Itanium) one then it could run 32-bit software without problems. In contrast to the 32-bit version it was essentially a Windows Server 2003.

Regards,
Sven

On 2022-06-24 09:02, Wolfgang Hubert via fpc-pascal wrote:

Hi Wolfgang,

I believe that we can help you with resolution with FPC if you're interested, it isn't that difficult after all. Building a trunk (main) compiler, rtl and packages is matter of several rather simple commands if you already have your FPC 3.2.2 installation, plus installation of an external package (LLVM). All of it rather feasible. Yes, you may possibly encounter some issues with the current port to this target (aarch64-win64), but I'm sure there are others willing to help with that part as well if you report such issues. Just let me/us know if you want to continue that way, I'm willing to provide more specific directions.

Tomas

Hi Tomas,

OK. What would be a good starting point? my Windows XP/32 machine with fpc 3.2.2 installed or my Windows 10/64 machine with fpc 3.2.2 installed? And which LLVM package shall I install?
...

My source code only uses RTL, System, SysUtils and Windows units. Windows is only needed for registry access.

Best regards,

Wolfgang

On 2022-06-25 10:58, Wolfgang Hubert via fpc-pascal wrote:

Hi Wolfgang,

Actually, this shouldn't matter. Assuming that your Win64 machine is newer and thus probably faster, I'd use that one.

And which LLVM package shall I install?

If you decide for the WinXP machine, you need
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-14.0.5/LLVM-14.0.5-win32.exe. If you go for the Win64 machine, I'd choose the 64-bit installer (https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-14.0.5/LLVM-14.0.5-win64.exe), but the 32-bit one should work equally well, in fact. A new LLVM release (14.0.6) has been officially announced yesterday, but the Win32/Win64 installers aren't available for it yet and I don't think that it should matter (eventually, you can upgrade to the newer version of LLVM later if needed).

My source code only uses RTL, System, SysUtils and Windows units. Windows is only needed for registry access.

OK. Nevertheless, I'll show you how to build packages as well - just in case you find a need to use some of them too.

In addition to LLVM installation, you'll also need to get source files for the development version of FPC. Considering the fact that you may need to update it later in case you discover some issues with this version, it's the best to get up to date source using the Git tool. Installer for this tool may be downloaded from
https://git-scm.com/download/win/. Depending on the chosen machine, you'd use either 32-bit Git for Windows Setup or 64-bit Git for Windows Setup. The installer might ask you some questions and I don't remember them - if you come across a question you can't answer yourself, just ask here. Once you're ready with this part, we'll continue from there by getting the latest FPC sources as described on
https://www.freepascal.org/develop.html#git. One important point (not really mentioned on that page clearly) is that you run the "git clone" command described there in a directory, where you want to place the FPC source tree. You don't need the fixes_3.2 sources, just the main development version (i.e. you don't care of anything following the "Fixes to 3.2.x" subtitle).

Let me know once you get to the end of that point (or if you come across some issue on the way there).

Tomas

Sorry, one additional thought - it's better to choose a directory without spaces when installing the LLVM package (i.e. not to accept the default proposal "C:\Program Files\..."), or at least let the installer change the PATH variable for you (which is not checked by default).

Tomas

Wolfgang Hubert via fpc-pascal schrieb am
Sa., 25. Juni 2022, 11:03:

Best go with the Windows 10 one, cause I think that LLVM no longer works on XP.

Regards,
Sven

Tomas Hajny via fpc-pascal schrieb am
Sa., 25. Juni 2022, 15:07:

As long as one passes the path as "-FDC:\Program Files\LLVM\bin" there is no problem with spaces. Putting it into PATH simplifies that nevertheless of course.

Regards,
Sven