enable workflow for ARM on Ubuntu and see what breaks

[shiftkey]

Exploring the lift required to have CI run tests and generate binaries for ARM on Ubuntu

[shiftkey]

@theofficialgman I know you've spent a lot of time in this area recently, so I'm curious if you have any thoughts on things that I should be trying out here before I try and include an ARM-based package in a release generated from CI.

Also, thanks for contributing to the Git packaging parts - this wouldn't have been possible without your sustained effort there...

[theofficialgman]

you shouldn't need to do this. see the above lines for setting npm_config_arch the function should already return with that having been set

[theofficialgman]

this should probably be changed to be more like getDistArchitecture. there is no need to set TARGET_ARCH and npm_config_arch when they both convey the same information. TARGET_ARCH is a variable internal to the dugite-native CI buildscripts. nothing is expecting that here.

basically these variables ( npm_config_arch and npm_config_target_arch ) are names recognized by node-gyp which is used to build native node modules (and used by electron) as well as other node programs. technically both should be set for highest compatibility
https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/using-native-node-modules#using-npm https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp

ie:

function getArchitecture() {
  // If a specific npm_config_arch is set, we use that one instead of the OS arch (to support cross compilation)
  if (process.env.npm_config_arch === 'arm64' ) {
    return '--arm64'
  }
  if (process.env.npm_config_arch === 'x64' ) {
    return '--x64'
  } 
  if ( process.env.npm_config_arch === 'armv7l' ) {
    return '--armv7l'
  }
  // If no specific npm_config_arch is set, use current process.arch
  switch (process.arch) {
    case 'arm64':
      return '--arm64'
    case 'arm':
      return '--armv7l'
    default:
      return '--x64'
  }
}

[theofficialgman]

although tenically you don't need to set npm_config_arch or npm_config_target_arch at all if you just call electron-builder with the appropriate --arm64, --armv7l, --x64 (which is what this script does) since electron-builder sets these variables for you based on the --arm64, --armv7l, --x64 input
https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/blob/c1cc2e9c24784d05e14ca292adc2452e9c0237f6/packages/app-builder-lib/src/util/yarn.ts#L43-L48

the problem is I think (from remembering your scripts from memory) that you build with yarn directly and only use electron-builder to package the application basically. so you would need to set npm_config_arch or npm_config_target_arch yourself for any native packages that yarn (which invokes npm) builds.

[shiftkey]

Shifting over to #897