V8 currency and Node.js 15

[targos]

This issue is mainly about nodejs/node#34337

We are now one month after the stable upstream release of V8 8.5. Unfortunately, the PR is still not ready to be merged, and I'm afraid that we may not be able to fix it soon enough for the release of Node.js 15.0.0, which would still have the same V8 version as Node.js 14.

It is now mainly blocked on a cross-compilation issue with ARM on Linux and I do not know what to do anymore. I have no experience with cross-compilation myself. @gengjiawen has been very helpful so far with the other issues (especially on Windows, thanks a lot! 🙇 ) but also seems out of ideas.

We tried to ping the platform-arm team and nobody answered (it's a very small team).
I'm opening an issue here hoping it gets some visibility. We haven't been so late with V8 updates in a very long time.

[mcollina]

I think we should ship without ARM on Linux if we do not have the capabilities to maintain it. Keeping V8 currency is a primary goal.

[targos]

@mcollina It's current a tier 1 platform:

[mcollina]

Either we reach out to ARM themselves or do a public call for help and we receive some help, or we downgrade it as our volunteers for supporting that platform are not there anymore.

[devsnek]

I fear we may lock out a large number of students if we drop Linux arm. I'd love to assist but my arm hardware is currently across the country from me due to some annoying circumstances.

[mcollina]

I fear we may lock out a large number of students if we drop Linux arm

I 100% agree, I'm just reporting the current state of things - I'm just measuring the current state of affairs: we lack volunteers for ARM.

---

@bnb maybe we can do a call to arms on twitter from the @nodejs account?

[bnb]

@mcollina I would be happy to. What specifically do we want to say?

[targos]

Note that probably no ARM hardware is needed to fix the build issue as it happens during cross-compilation on the host (x64).

[MylesBorins]

I can maybe take a look. Have we pinged the V8 team at all? In the past I was able to get them to help with build issues

[mmarchini]

I can try to help over the weekend

[mhdawson]

I assume this would affect apple on arm as well ? Just want to understand so that we know what people/companies we might reach out to in respect to finding more people to help out on the arm platform.

[mmarchini]

Do we have instructions somewhere for cross-compilation? Couldn't find any on BUILDING.md

[mmarchini]

That's what I tried on Ubuntu (WSL2) on master:

$ sudo apt install binutils-arm-linux-gnueabi gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi g++-arm-linux-gnueabi
$ ./configure --dest-cpu=arm
$ make
...
  cc -o /home/mmarchini/workspace/node/out/Release/obj.target/openssl/deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/asn1/a_int.o ../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/asn1/a_int.c '-DV8_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS' '-DV8_IMMINENT_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS' '-D__STDC_FORMAT_MACROS' '-DOPENSSL_NO_PINSHARED' '-DOPENSSL_THREADS' '-DOPENSSL_NO_HW' '-DOPENSSL_NO_QUIC=1' '-DNDEBUG' '-DOPENSSL_USE_NODELETE' '-DOPENSSL_PIC' '-DOPENSSL_CPUID_OBJ' '-DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT' '-DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m' '-DSHA1_ASM' '-DSHA256_ASM' '-DSHA512_ASM' '-DKECCAK1600_ASM' '-DAES_ASM' '-DBSAES_ASM' '-DGHASH_ASM' '-DECP_NISTZ256_ASM' '-DPOLY1305_ASM' '-DOPENSSLDIR="/etc/ssl"' '-DENGINESDIR="/dev/null"' '-DTERMIOS' -I../deps/openssl/openssl -I../deps/openssl/openssl/include -I../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto -I../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/include -I../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/modes -I../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/ec/curve448 -I../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/ec/curve448/arch_32 -I../deps/openssl/config -I../deps/openssl/config/archs/linux-armv4/asm -I../deps/openssl/config/archs/linux-armv4/asm/include -I../deps/openssl/config/archs/linux-armv4/asm/crypto -I../deps/openssl/config/archs/linux-armv4/asm/crypto/include/internal  -pthread -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -O3 -pthread -Wall -O3 -Wno-missing-field-initializers -Wno-old-style-declaration -O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer  -MMD -MF /home/mmarchini/workspace/node/out/Release/.deps//home/mmarchini/workspace/node/out/Release/obj.target/openssl/deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/asn1/a_int.o.d.raw   -c
In file included from ../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/armcap.c:18:
../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/arm_arch.h:55:6: error: #error "unsupported ARM architecture"
   55 | #    error "unsupported ARM architecture"
      |      ^~~~~
make[1]: *** [deps/openssl/openssl.target.mk:850: /home/mmarchini/workspace/node/out/Release/obj.target/openssl/deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/armcap.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make: *** [Makefile:104: node] Error 2

I think I might be missing some dependency.

[targos]

@mmarchini There are some hints here: nodejs/node#35252

[mmarchini]

Ok, I think I got it building. Thank you @targos! Will share a gist with steps to build once I confirm it works.

Will also try to use QEMU to test. If it works I might send a PR to add a test-linux-arm Action 🔥 (which will also serve as documentation, kind of).

[nschonni]

@mmarchini you might want to take a look at nodejs/docker-node#1334 where there is an approach for using QEMU with GitHub Actions