Bruno Haible <[email protected]> writes: >> Unrelated to your commits (thanks for fixing those, though), but I >> assume you are using QEMU to emulate arm64 and run Windows on it? >> >> Is running it fairly straightforward? > > Yes, it uses QEMU. You find the installation steps in > maint-tools/platforms/environments/qemu/arm64-windows11.txt. > > It does require some particular qemu options (for instance, > "-device ramfb" instead of "-device VGA"). If you try without > these options, it is not straightforward. If you know which options > to use and which CDROM image will actually boot, it is straightforward. > That's precisely the point of this write-up. > > Note that the resulting development environment is slow, because > * QEMU needs to emulate the arm64 CPU. > * Windows 11 is so bloated that simple GUI actions like getting a popup > menu take several seconds. > * The only POSIX-like environments on Windows (Cygwin and MSYS2) come > as x86_64 binaries, and these binaries are emulated by the Windows > built-in x86_64-on-arm64 emulator. > > As an alternative, for CI purposes, one can use the GitHub windows-11-arm > machines and install MSYS2 there. This is faster because it does not need > QEMU. But of course, this is not suitable for interactive debugging.
Interesting, thanks for the reply and for writing that document in maint-tools. My uneduated assumption is that gradually more people will get arm64 Windows laptops, and eventually someone with enough time and desire will figure out how to wire up support for arm64 packages in Cygwin and MSYS2. Collin
