Fail build script on Ubuntu ARM

[doganulus]

The following lines in the build scripts fails on ARM builds (such as ubuntu-latest-arm runners) as they hardcode x86_64 paths.

cvw/bin/wally-package-install.sh

Lines 159 to 162 in ef65739

	if (( UBUNTU_VERSION >= 24 )); then
	ln -vsf /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.6 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5
	ln -vsf /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libntinfo.so.5
	fi

[jordancarlin]

ARM is not a supported platform for our installation scripts, and I suspect you will run into several other issues with it. I’ll see if there is a simple way to avoid this particular error though.

[doganulus]

The Arm support is important in classrooms as many students run Arm-based machines (especially MacBooks). Since this repository targets educational programs, I would love if the support extends towards Arm.

That particular line is easy to avoid for example. But a general policy to avoid hardcoded paths in installation scripts would be great to have. Intel architecture is not that dominant anymore as RISC-V and this repository demonstrate.

[davidharrishmc]

There are a lot of differences between a Mac and x86 RedHat Linux. We’ve never seriously considered trying all the tools on a Mac. Do you have experience with this? If you are able to manually install and run the following tools on a Macbook, there’s hope we might the whole flow running, excluding commercial EEDA tools. * GCC riscv64-unknown-elf-gcc * Spike * Sail * Verilator

…

On Jul 1, 2025, at 1:46 PM, Doğan Ulus ***@***.***> wrote: doganulus left a comment (openhwgroup/cvw#1472) <#1472 (comment)> The Arm support is important in classrooms as many students run Arm-based machines (especially MacBooks). Since this repository targets educational programs, I would love if the support extends towards Arm. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1472 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AR4AA3ZLENDXGDDKGLWMD3D3GLXTLAVCNFSM6AAAAACAQHYWO2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTAMRVGQ2TCOJUGQ>. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.

[doganulus]

We use Docker containers to standardize our computer architecture lab environment and distribute it to students over container registries. These containers work uniformly across Linux, Windows, and macOS, but we must be able to build them separately for each architecture.

I try to build the project in containers on Ubuntu ARM.

[jordancarlin]

That will be much simpler to support. I will try to go through and switch all of the installation commands over to be architecture-agnostic in the next few days (or you're welcome to open a PR sooner). The trickier part will be Sail (which we download as a precompiled binary). I see that you've already opened rems-project/sail#1369 though, so it might make sense to wait on that.

[doganulus]

Sail compiles under ARM without any issue.

This repo may use an OPAM installed version, but I am not sure of the overhead. I would love to keep the development environment as small as possible.

[jordancarlin]

We use the precompiled Sail release and avoid using OPAM because of issues with OPAM and z3 on RHEL based distributions. We could conditionally use OPAM when running on arm, but we’d have to limit that to Ubuntu/Debian.

[doganulus]

Ok, let's wait for the Sail PR. It's more straightforward and useful for the ecosystem.

[jordancarlin]

@doganulus Sail 0.20 has been released with a Linux ARM binary available. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get to this, but if you want to update the installation scripts to use it when running on ARM, I'd happily review a PR.

[doganulus]

The problem is that installation scripts do more than what I consider sufficient and they are hard to modify. So I didn't use at the end.

I could still try to help but I don't have the capacity during the semester.