Compiling for arm64/aarch64

[sandeep-gh]

I tried compiling this on arm64 but failed here:

; compiling file "/home/ubuntu/common-lisp/nyxt/quicklisp-client/dists/quicklisp/software/cl-cffi-gtk-20200427-git/glib/glib.misc.lisp" (written 05 SEP 2020 08:04:22 PM):
; compiling (IN-PACKAGE :GLIB)
; compiling (COND (# #) ...)Unhandled SIMPLE-ERROR in thread #<SB-THREAD:THREAD "main thread" RUNNING
                                    {1002827E03}>:
  Can not define 'g-size', unknown CPU architecture (known are x86 and x86-64)

Not sure if there is a simple fix.

[aartaka]

cl-cffi-glib has this cond in its toplevel (it's the one the error comes from):

(eval-when (:compile-toplevel :load-toplevel :execute)
  (cond ((cffi-features:cffi-feature-p :x86-64) (defctype g-size :uint64))
        ((cffi-features:cffi-feature-p :x86)    (defctype g-size :ulong))
        ((cffi-features:cffi-feature-p :ppc32)  (defctype g-size :uint32))
        ((cffi-features:cffi-feature-p :ppc64)  (defctype g-size :uint64))
        (t
         (error "Can not define 'g-size', unknown CPU architecture ~
                (known are x86 and x86-64)"))))

cffi-features have no features related to ARM (the full list of architectures is #:ppc32 #:x86 #:x86-64 #:sparc #:sparc64 #:hppa #:hppa64). It doesn't mean that ARM is impossible to work with, just that there're no CFFI binding for it yet.

We'd need to make something with ARM support in cffi and cl-cffi-glib to even try compiling Nyxt for ARM. It's not impossible though, because GLib seems to be at least compilable for ARM and has ARM Debian package, for example. It's just about writing proper bindings in Lisp :)

[Ambrevar]

It might take a lot of work to get cl-cffi-glib support ARM. However, adding support in CFFI might be enough if we add a cl-gobject-introspection renderer for Nyxt.

[Ambrevar]

@aartaka Any idea if upstream has a discussion about ARM support?
The bug tracker does not seem to have much: https://bugs.launchpad.net/cffi?field.searchtext=arm&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.has_patch=&field.has_no_package=

[aartaka]

@aartaka Any idea if upstream has a discussion about ARM support?
The bug tracker does not seem to have much

I was wondering about that too. It seems ARM support it's not on a tracker :(

[Ambrevar]

I've asked: https://bugs.launchpad.net/cffi/+bug/1909977

[Ambrevar]

Answer from Luis:

CFFI contains virtually no architecture-specific code, so there's no need to add ARM support. The cl-cffi-gtk code mention in nyxt issue 932 uses cffi-features which has been deprecated in favor of trivial-features almost 15 years ago. Please use trivial-features instead. However, trivial-features doesn't mention ARM. I'm not familiar with all the ARM variants, but the first step to specify ARM features in trivial-features would be to survey what CL implementations currently push to features on that platform. HTH.

[Ambrevar]

Update: Trivial-features now supports ARM.

trivial-features/trivial-features#13 (comment)

CL-CFFI-GTK could be updated as per this comment. We could fork it if upstream does not do it.

But we could also switch to cl-gobject-introspection entirely.

[Thovthe]

Would getting a PineBook Pro for one of the core devs maybe lead to some further progress in this area?

[jmercouris]

Maybe. Our issue is primarily one of time, not hardware. The proposal is however, welcome. Thank you for your consideration!

[aadcg]

The issue reported in the original post no longer exists.

[Ambrevar]

Does Nyxt compile on ARM now?

[aadcg]

I was able to load both cl-webkit2 and cl-cffi-gtk and generate all .fas (similar to .fasl in SBCL) and .o files with ECL on an ARM device.

From there, it would be need to be further tested.

[aadcg]

Nyxt runs on ARM.