Please add build for Windows 10 arm64

[dennisameling]

I saw that you're planning to do some tests with Windows arm64: https://github.com/libvips/build-win64-mxe/blob/master/TODO.md

Please let me know if I can be of any help with testing. Have a Surface Pro X which runs Windows 10 arm64.

Thanks in advance!

[kleisauke]

Testing this on a Surface Pro X would be great! I was indeed planning to build these binaries for ARM-based Windows versions as well. The current master should already support ARM on Windows, but it's currently missing SVG support. The work-in-progress arm-rust branch should fix this.

I might be able to upload some test binaries tomorrow.

[kleisauke]

This will take a little longer than expected. The ARM64 binaries passes the libvips test suite for the "web" variant but heifsave (included in the "all" variant) appears to be broken (it segfaults within x265). Curiously, the ARM32 binaries passes the heifsave test without issues. Although there is one test that seems to fail for this architecture, PR libvips/libvips#1832 should fix this.

(This was tested on a Raspberry Pi 3B with Windows 10 IoT (ARM32) and on a Raspberry Pi 4B with Windows 10 ARM64)

[kleisauke]

PR #15 should resolve this issue. The segfault in x265 for ARM64 is still present but this dependency will excluded from the prebuilt binaries in the future, so there's no point in investigating that further.

I intend to release only the statically-linked "web" variants for possible integration in NetVips and sharp. I'm not sure if there is interest in the other variants.

@lovell Do you think sharp can benefit from this?

[lovell]

Yes, most probably. Do you know of a CI service that provides the Windows+ARM combo?

[kleisauke]

A pre-release of the ARM-binaries can be found here: https://github.com/libvips/build-win64-mxe/releases/tag/v8.10.1-arm.

I'm not sure whether there is a CI service that can test this. AFAIK, AppVeyor is only capable of cross-compiling for Windows on ARM, and unable to actually test these binaries. Perhaps Azure Pipelines supports Windows on ARM?

[dennisameling]

@lovell No CI service that supports Windows on ARM unfortunately, even Azure Pipelines doesn't support it ATM. Some large OSS projects like VS Code and Electron have ARM devices like the Surface Pro X in their office and then installed the x86 Windows Azure Pipelines Agent to make it available in Azure Pipelines.

So yes, cross-compiling is currently possible using different CI providers, but if you want to run actual tests on an ARM64 device, you'll need to have one at your disposal that you can link to Azure Pipelines or a different CI provider 😞

[dennisameling]

Also, here's a feature request for hosted ARM64 Windows agents in Azure Pipelines, please feel free to upvote: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/idea/1015752/please-add-a-windows-arm64-hosted-agent.html

[wojtekmaj]

Related issue: actions/runner-images#768