Re: [INTERNALS-WIN] Ship PHP builds for Windows on arm64?

On 28/08/2024 20:16, Christoph M. Becker wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> cross-posting for reach (guess that only few read internals-win).
>
> We had a feature request the other day to ship PHP builds for Windows on
> arm64[1].  It seems to me that Windows on arm64 has left its infancy,
> and we may not want to fall too far behind in supporting that platform.
>
> We already have basic support for doing PHP builds for Windows on arm64
> for a few years, but there are still two major issues:
>
> (1) The libraries on which several extensions rely are not yet available
> for Windows on arm64; at least the winlib-builder[2] would need to be
> improved in this regard, but of course, some libraries may not even
> support Windows on arm64 yet.
>
> (2) To my knowledge, none of the core developers has a Windows on arm64
> environment available, and I presume that nobody wants to run an arm64
> emulator on an x64 machine.  And since there are no public GH runners
> for that platform (that might change in a couple of months, though[3]),
> we cannot actually test (let alone develop) these builds.
>
> If we ship builds with what we have now, we may get user feedback, and
> might be able to fix an issue or three.  And we may even get some help
> regarding (1), so (hope dies last) we might be able to ship a full
> fledged PHP 8.4.0 for Windows on arm64.
>
> Therefore I suggest to make PHP 8.4 builds for Windows on arm64
> available on <https://windows.php.net/>, either on the QA releases page,
> or on the snapshots page, but to clearly mark these as highly
> experimental and incomplete.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> [1] <https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/15610>
> [2] <https://github.com/winlibs/winlib-builder>
> [3]
> <https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/arm64-on-github-actions-powering-faster-more-efficient-build-systems/>
>
> Christoph

I think that, unless and until GHA supports Win arm64, why should PHP? 
GitHub is owned by Microsoft, so they will add such runners when they 
see value in it.

Cheers,
Bilge