Any plans for a native Windows 10 ARM64 build?

[gtopala]

Any plans for a native Windows 10 ARM64 build?

[DrShark]

2gtopala
You can read following forum discussions about TC for ARM build of Windows 10 with answers from Christian Ghisler:
viewtopic.php?t=38464
viewtopic.php?p=339381#p339381

[gtopala]

A Windows 10 ARM64 application doesn't need to be UWP or in the Windows Store.
It can be a desktop application compiled for ARM64.

[ghisler(Author)]

I can only repeat what I wrote there:
Unfortunately the used compilers (Delphi/Lazarus) do not support Windows RT/ ARM processors. Therefore it's unfortunately not possible.

[ssg]

I'd like to refresh this thread as FreePascal supports Windows ARM64 now: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Platform_list#Supported_targets_for_AArch64

Lazarus doesn't seem to have a native build for ARM64 yet though.

[ghisler(Author)]

I have tried TC on Windows ARM64 (Raspberry PI 4) and it runs surprisingly well even as x86 or x64 version. Creating a native version would cause another problem: All plugins would stop working, because they are just x86/x64 dlls.

[SES]

It works in emulation, but it costs additional battery life and performance. I hope to see the arm64 version soon. I will buy a new licence to support development when available. I believe plugin developers will start to deliver the arm64 version when the TC is available.

[ghisler(Author)]

Most functions in Total Commander are not very CPU intensive, so it's not a problem. If you need to create a lot of archives, you may want to use an external, native packer for that.

[necesse]

How do you emulate x86 to ARM?
I would also buy a new license for a native ARM version

[drac]

I would also buy a license for a native arm64 version. I don't use any external plugins that would require a compilation.

Running under a x64 emulation affects how programs are started from Total Commander, they are not started as arm64 but under a x64 emulation, which can have side effects.

You can get a cheap " Samsung Galaxy Book Go 5G" from ebay.com, which has a rather poor LCD picked by Samsung, but that can be replaced. I documented my experience at https://cristianadam.eu/20221126/windows-arm64-samsung-galaxy-book-go-5g/

[ghisler(Author)]

Running under a x64 emulation affects how programs are started from Total Commander

How? When you run a native ARM program from Total Commander, how would that be run by the x64 emulator?

[drac]

At https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTCREATORBUG-26934 I have found out that running

Code: Select all

c:\Windows\System32\msiexec.exe /i "c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\Redist\X64 Debuggers And Tools-x64_en-us.msi"

behaved differently from Total Commander than running from Windows Explorer.

In the case above it worked actually better, but it's an example how executables started from the x64 emulation behave differently than the ones started from arm64.

[ghisler(Author)]

That's probably because x64 programs see a different system32 folder than native programs - it must be the one containing the x64 dlls. Try running msiexec.exe from the native ARM sysmtem32 folder.

[drac]

Please note that Windows 11 Arm64 comes with the following:

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C:\Windows\SysArm32
$ dumpbin /headers cmd.exe | findstr /i machine
             1C4 machine (ARM)
                   32 bit word machine

c:\Windows\SysWOW64
$ dumpbin /headers cmd.exe | findstr /i machine
             14C machine (x86)
                   32 bit word machine
                   
C:\Windows\System32
$ dumpbin /headers cmd.exe | findstr /i machine
            AA64 machine (ARM64) (ARM64X)                   
 

It has specific binaries for 32 bit arm and x86, but for 64 bit it has two architectures into one.

Microsoft did some magic regarding Arm64 and it's not as simple as it used to be.

[drac]

As it turns out with Windows 11 22H2 cmd.exe got a new feature:

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start /machine x86|amd64|arm|arm64

Which means that Total Commander could be used to start arm64 applications like:

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%comspec% /q /c start /machine arm64 c:\Windows\System32\msiexec.exe /i "c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\Redist\X64 Debuggers And Tools-x64_en-us.msi"

I would still like to have a native arm64 application though Maybe I would have more luck with the competition...