10 ms·

CoreCLR building on ARM

127 points by shahid-pk 11y ago

shahid-pk 11y ago
Coreclr now compiles on arm tested on rasperi-pi 2. This port was a community effort. It is still rough (debugging and exception handling not supported currently) but it will reach their eventually.
rcarmo 11y ago
Niiice. Back when I tried doing some of this, it was pretty much an uphill struggle.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  Come join us over at https://gitter.im/dotnet/coreclr https://gitter.im/dotnet/coreclr we would love to have you. Contributions are very welcome and are well received: https://sec.ch9.ms/ch9/d47a/a2eb1f1d-e95f-424d-8f40-e93e218cd47a/firstdotnetportaward_high.mp4 https://sec.ch9.ms/ch9/d47a/a2eb1f1d-e95f-424d-8f40-e93e218c...
  - will_hughes 11y ago
    Non-GUID URL for that video: https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/First-NET-Port-Award https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/First-NET-Port-Award (Side rant: I wish they'd just upload stuff to youtube, the C9 codec/cdn support never works right for me, even on 100Mbit fibre the low quality streams stall out)
ghuntley 11y ago
.NET everywhere, that makes five platforms in less than six months. Windows, Linux by MSFT and OSX, FreeBSD, ARM done out in the open by the community via GitHub pull-requests!
- mattkrea 11y ago
  Try using it on Linux or OS X. It isn't there yet.
  - alpb 11y ago
    It's not ready for end-user yet, I agree on that part. However I experimented with CoreCLR on Linux and managed to get things running. It will most likely take another 6 months or so to polish all those and we'll get ourselves a new cross-platform language.
  - shahid-pk 11y ago
    So it is on windows too (As the software is in its beta phase) .
    - zamalek 11y ago
      RyuJIT is included with .Net 4.6, which RTM'd last week. It's production quality on Windows. It's probably an older and more stable version of what is on GitHub.
      - shahid-pk 11y ago
        You are correct. Ryujit is ready for production but coreclr has other parts that are different from .net 4.6 and coreclr specefic (like PAL for non windows) which is not production tested yet.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    I am using Mono on Linux as a backend service and it works pretty well.
    - mattkrea 11y ago
      Mono has worked fine for me in the past but I was more referring to CoreCLR which is consistently called 'cross-platform' now but is far from it as their own tooling crashes all over the place when attempting to use it (dnu restore, dnu install, dnx . run, etc).
- novaleaf 11y ago
  C# is my favorite (and most skilled) language, but I moved to Node+Typescript when that came out due to cross platform needs (linux) I'm actually getting back into C# because of these broadening ecosystems (and hopefully improved OSS community over time!)
batou 11y ago
Did anyone know they issued a CLR already that worked on ARM, PPC, OSX and FreeBSD and is open source? It even requires perl to build! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4917 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4917 (they yanked official support for half of the bits bit its still in the tree)
- shahid-pk 11y ago
  Their is a problem with that. First that is 15 years old and is not open source (it is just source open). This was for educational purposes and first ever implementation of the common language runtime. It was a prove of concept project.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Yeah, the problem is that MS decided to not really do cross-platform, despite having paid the technical cost and design. Thus dooming .NET to coming second place to the JVM as far as neat languages and tech goes.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    > source open "Shared Source." I.e. Never look at that code, ever. Just pretend Rotor doesn't even exist. There are projects that will not have you (Mono) if you've read Rotor code.
bigjake 11y ago
The Raspberry Pi 2 port is not complete, but it is well on its way (props to benpye who did the bulk of the work.) The FreeBSD port is a community effort as well.
rottyguy 11y ago
Is Visual Studio written completely in .net at this point? Meaning will this get ported over automagically once all the .net pieces are in place on other platforms (assuming machine resources are available)?
- shanselman 11y ago
  No, because it's all using Windows UI APIs underneath. The cross platform VS code editor is code.visualstudio.com. You'll never see FULL VS elsewhere, IMHO.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    > Windows UI APIs To add on to this: COM. When you work with non-MEF Visual Studio extensions it's COM all the way down. To port Visual Studio you'd first need to port COM, which is probably never going to happen. Removing COM looks like it would encroach on rewrite territory (and would break a bunch of existing plugins that use it): also incredibly unlikely.
- Locke1689 11y ago
  Speaking for myself, not MSFT: No, VS is a hellish mix of C++ and .NET. My personal prediction is that VS is unintelligible and will never be ported to anywhere else.
  - saosebastiao 11y ago
    Isn't it amazing that code can get to that point? I mean, even insanely complex things like space shuttles/stations are understandable. They're documented, compartmentalized in functionality, and maintainable. If they need to build onto it or swap out some functionality, they can do it. It's pretty sad that we let some software turn into behemoths that don't accept change.
    - andrewflnr 11y ago
      That physical artifacts only have 3 dimensions probably makes it more difficult to introduce the sort of interconnectedness that tends to make software artifacts harder to understand.
bpye 11y ago
There is still work to be done, https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/1192 https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/1192 . RyuJIT has legacy backend code and the new RyuJIT backend, only the former is functional on ARM but won't be supported. Exception handling, also unwinding for GC is seemingly blocked by an LLVM bug resulting in bad unwind information being output for the exact build settings we need https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24146 https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24146 . It is quite surprising to me how much visibility this has gotten though even in the very rough state it's in now.

127 points by shahid-pk 11y ago

Coreclr now compiles on arm tested on rasperi-pi 2. This port was a community effort. It is still rough (debugging and exception handling not supported currently) but it will reach their eventually.

rcarmo 11y ago

Niiice. Back when I tried doing some of this, it was pretty much an uphill struggle.

ghuntley 11y ago
Come join us over at https://gitter.im/dotnet/coreclr https://gitter.im/dotnet/coreclr we would love to have you. Contributions are very welcome and are well received: https://sec.ch9.ms/ch9/d47a/a2eb1f1d-e95f-424d-8f40-e93e218cd47a/firstdotnetportaward_high.mp4 https://sec.ch9.ms/ch9/d47a/a2eb1f1d-e95f-424d-8f40-e93e218c...
- will_hughes 11y ago
  Non-GUID URL for that video: https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/First-NET-Port-Award https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/First-NET-Port-Award (Side rant: I wish they'd just upload stuff to youtube, the C9 codec/cdn support never works right for me, even on 100Mbit fibre the low quality streams stall out)

ghuntley 11y ago

.NET everywhere, that makes five platforms in less than six months. Windows, Linux by MSFT and OSX, FreeBSD, ARM done out in the open by the community via GitHub pull-requests!

mattkrea 11y ago
Try using it on Linux or OS X. It isn't there yet.
- alpb 11y ago
  It's not ready for end-user yet, I agree on that part. However I experimented with CoreCLR on Linux and managed to get things running. It will most likely take another 6 months or so to polish all those and we'll get ourselves a new cross-platform language.
- shahid-pk 11y ago
  So it is on windows too (As the software is in its beta phase) .
  - zamalek 11y ago
    RyuJIT is included with .Net 4.6, which RTM'd last week. It's production quality on Windows. It's probably an older and more stable version of what is on GitHub.
    - shahid-pk 11y ago
      You are correct. Ryujit is ready for production but coreclr has other parts that are different from .net 4.6 and coreclr specefic (like PAL for non windows) which is not production tested yet.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  I am using Mono on Linux as a backend service and it works pretty well.
  - mattkrea 11y ago
    Mono has worked fine for me in the past but I was more referring to CoreCLR which is consistently called 'cross-platform' now but is far from it as their own tooling crashes all over the place when attempting to use it (dnu restore, dnu install, dnx . run, etc).
novaleaf 11y ago
C# is my favorite (and most skilled) language, but I moved to Node+Typescript when that came out due to cross platform needs (linux) I'm actually getting back into C# because of these broadening ecosystems (and hopefully improved OSS community over time!)

batou 11y ago

Did anyone know they issued a CLR already that worked on ARM, PPC, OSX and FreeBSD and is open source? It even requires perl to build! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4917 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4917 (they yanked official support for half of the bits bit its still in the tree)

shahid-pk 11y ago
Their is a problem with that. First that is 15 years old and is not open source (it is just source open). This was for educational purposes and first ever implementation of the common language runtime. It was a prove of concept project.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Yeah, the problem is that MS decided to not really do cross-platform, despite having paid the technical cost and design. Thus dooming .NET to coming second place to the JVM as far as neat languages and tech goes.
- zamalek 11y ago
  > source open "Shared Source." I.e. Never look at that code, ever. Just pretend Rotor doesn't even exist. There are projects that will not have you (Mono) if you've read Rotor code.

bigjake 11y ago

The Raspberry Pi 2 port is not complete, but it is well on its way (props to benpye who did the bulk of the work.) The FreeBSD port is a community effort as well.

rottyguy 11y ago

Is Visual Studio written completely in .net at this point? Meaning will this get ported over automagically once all the .net pieces are in place on other platforms (assuming machine resources are available)?

shanselman 11y ago
No, because it's all using Windows UI APIs underneath. The cross platform VS code editor is code.visualstudio.com. You'll never see FULL VS elsewhere, IMHO.
- zamalek 11y ago
  > Windows UI APIs To add on to this: COM. When you work with non-MEF Visual Studio extensions it's COM all the way down. To port Visual Studio you'd first need to port COM, which is probably never going to happen. Removing COM looks like it would encroach on rewrite territory (and would break a bunch of existing plugins that use it): also incredibly unlikely.
Locke1689 11y ago
Speaking for myself, not MSFT: No, VS is a hellish mix of C++ and .NET. My personal prediction is that VS is unintelligible and will never be ported to anywhere else.
- saosebastiao 11y ago
  Isn't it amazing that code can get to that point? I mean, even insanely complex things like space shuttles/stations are understandable. They're documented, compartmentalized in functionality, and maintainable. If they need to build onto it or swap out some functionality, they can do it. It's pretty sad that we let some software turn into behemoths that don't accept change.
  - andrewflnr 11y ago
    That physical artifacts only have 3 dimensions probably makes it more difficult to introduce the sort of interconnectedness that tends to make software artifacts harder to understand.

bpye 11y ago

There is still work to be done, https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/1192 https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/1192 . RyuJIT has legacy backend code and the new RyuJIT backend, only the former is functional on ARM but won't be supported. Exception handling, also unwinding for GC is seemingly blocked by an LLVM bug resulting in bad unwind information being output for the exact build settings we need https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24146 https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24146 . It is quite surprising to me how much visibility this has gotten though even in the very rough state it's in now.