How can I run Dronekit-SITL on systems with "ARM" processors?

[ghost]

I am using a MacBook with Apple M1 processor. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 ARM version on the virtual machine. I did all the installations correctly. But Dronekit-SITL is not working. I am sharing the error I got below.

How can I run Dronekit-SITL on ARM systems?
I read something called compiling from source in other issues. Can you help with this?

[hamishwillee]

Yes, you have to build the source since prebuilt binaries for ARM are not provided. There is some information on this https://dronekit-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/develop/sitl_setup.html

There is a note there that explains how, after building, you can then run the binaries from SITL

You can also use dronekit-sitl to start a SITL executable that you have built locally from source. To do this, put the file path of the target executable in the SITL_BINARY environment variable, or as the first argument when calling the tool.

[peterbarker]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2022, Hamish Willee wrote: Yes, you have to build the source since prebuilt binaries for ARM are not provided. There is some information on this https://dronekit-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/develop/sitl_setup.html

Actually... we have for about three years :-) https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Copter/beta/SITL_arm_linux_gnueabihf/

There is a note there that explains how, after building, you can then run the binaries from SITL You can also use dronekit-sitl to start a SITL executable that you have built locally from source. To do this, put the file path of the target executable in the SITL_BINARY environment variable, or as the first argument when calling the tool.

There's also a very experimental branch that can retrieve the binaries from the firmware server: https://github.com/peterbarker/dronekit-sitl/commits/wip/firmware-server

[hamishwillee]

Thanks for the clarification @peterbarker - I'll remember this for next time. You could update the docs.