Windows on ARM...

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2024-04-09 20:03, Paul Dupuis via use-livecode wrote:
> Mothership people (or anyone in the community that may know this):
> 
> Microsoft is expected to port and release Windows running on ARM chips 
> (Surface laptops will use the Snapdragon X Elite processors from 
> Qualcomm) this year. Announcement expected May 20, shipping - who knows 
> when, but likely this year. This is to compete with Apple's M# chips.
> 
> Will we have a dual build option in Livecode (or is one even needed)? 
> And, for the BIG QUESTION, how long is it likely to be after Windows on 
> ARM is released to the public before we see a LC version that supports 
> it?

I can't really say when we will add a native ARM64 build for Windows - 
it will depend largely on demand and need.

That being said, we have recently updated how we build the windows 
engine to use the most recent version of Visual Studio (which has arm64 
target compilers) so that is at least a step in the right direction.

> I know, this is probably way ahead of any practical answer, but I know 
> we WILL have customers asking us if our app (built on LC9.6.11) will 
> run on Windows on ARM on day one.

Windows ARM has been available to everyone for a while - albeit not 
strictly a 'public' thing, virtualization tools like VMware on macOS 
will download and install the ARM version of windows automatically if 
you are running on an ARM mac.

We have a couple of people internally who have ARM macs, and use VMware 
to run Windows in ARM and we haven't seen any problems.

So I can echo what Mike said - especially since Microsoft added x86-64 
support to their Intel emulation layer on Windows ARM (think Rosetta 2) 
about a year or so ago - both x86 and x86-64 versions of the LiveCode 
engine run seamlessly on it.

Another thing to remember is that Microsoft are not forcing a processor 
transition unlike Apple have done twice now (in the last two decades) - 
I fully expect that Windows on ARM will support Intel executables 
indefinitely, just like x86-64 Windows continues to support x86 
executables.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Build Amazing Things