ARM

ARM support

Motivation

Windows apps are mostly compiled for x86 and they won't run on ARM with bare Wine, likewise ARM applications won't run on x86(_64) with bare Wine, so this is not our motivation.

The original Motivation was to be able to run winelib-apps on ARM, that even was before it got public that win8 will run on ARM devices. Meanwhile we support these new ARM PEs for win8!

Status

• Yes, It works! (TM)
• Running win8 ARM PEs also works.
• Already ported Putty to ARM as winelib application.
• First patch was September 18. 2009, final patchset sent September 18. 2010 and they got in Wine-1.3.4
• Wine on ARM already gets packaged by Debian (since 1.7.35), Fedora, Maemo and openSUSE.
• Good debugger/disassembler support.
• Relay tracing.
• Relocation.
• Linux Kernel patched upstream for running Windows RT applications see Bug 31322

Todo

• libs/port/interlocked.c: maybe native operations.
• wine-gecko/wine-mono ARM port (waiting for mingw-w64-arm).
• DCOM

How to help

• Fix compiler warnings.
• Run winetest and report your results.
• Fix test failures or analyse them, see below.
• Report bugs with winelib or Windows RT applications.
• Write tests for missing functions.

Compiling

Toolchains: Every toolchain with Thumb support should work as we are independent from the crti.o mode since wine-1.5.8

Compiling on the ARM Device is recommended:

../configure && make

Anyway here is a crosscompiling example:

../configure --host=arm-linux-gnueabihf host_alias=arm-linux-gnueabihf --with-wine-tools=../path/to/your/native/wine/build && make

Maybe you also should append something like:

CFLAGS="-mcpu=yourcpu -g -O2" LDFLAGS="-mcpu=yourcpu"

Fixme/Todo: Compiling inside a chroot

Running Windows RT Applications

You can find a list of such ported applications at forum.xda-developers.com. To run them you'll need a recent Wine and a Linux Kernel with the tpidrurw patch, it's included since Kernel 3.11-rc1. When you're unsure if the Kernel you are using supports it, you can clone, make and run tpidrurw-test, it'll tell you if your Kernel is suitable.

Running Windows CE Applications

That's still pre-alpha/proof-of-concept and not part of official Wine, don't expect any success. WineCE can be found at github.

Running Windows/x86 Applications

Actually there is a bug in qemu, so it can't work without a patch (qemu-i386-user on ARM host: wine hangs).

This configuration is not supported, but you'll be able to run some Applications. Don't ask for support on winehq.org, but be free to read I got Wine/x86 1.5.11 to run on Linux/ARM with qemu!.

• patch qemu with the NPTL patch, you must do it manually when using recent qemu, e.g. the one from Alexander Graf
• compile it with

./configure --target-list=i386-linux-user --extra-cflags=-marm && make

• copy Wine/x86 with all needed libraries from your desktop to the corresponding /usr/gnemul/qemu-i386/* folders except wine-preloader (it won't work)
• as root run

echo ':i386:M::\x7fELF\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x03:\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xfe\xfe\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xfb\xff\xff:/path/to/patched/qemu/i386-linux-user/qemu-i386:' >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
echo ':DOSWin:M::MZ::/usr/gnemul/qemu-i386/usr/bin/wine:' >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register

• create a wineprefix on your desktop with

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.winex86 wine wineboot

• copy it from your desktop to your home folder
• run Wine/x86 with something like /path/to/patched/qemu/i386-linux-user/qemu-i386 /usr/gnemul/qemu-i386/usr/bin/wine winecfg

Remember: This configuration is not supported. Don't ask for support on winehq.org.

Analyzed/Known Test Failures

• d3dx9_36:mesh
  • Crashes, https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43945
• mscoree:mscoree
  • no wine-mono for arm, https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43937
• mshtml:* (FIXME: also applies to several others)
  • no wine-gecko for arm, https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43938
• msi:action
  • https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43944
• msvcr100:msvcr100
  • softfloat vs. hardfloat
• rpcrt4:cstub
  • https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43960
• user32:class
  • per dissonant compile time checks the testsuite expects the x86 value for cbWndExtra, whereas the code uses the pointer size

Wine and Valgrind

Currently a work in progress - Austin English

• running valgrind + wine on armv7l gives illegal opcode

See also

André Hentschel

Wine On Android

ARM commits in Wine (and the Thumb ones)

ARM Bugs

AArch64: ARM64

My and Vincents slides can be found here: FOSDEM2013

For Windows RT recompiled applications check: at xda-developers

Examples of Winelib ports: - on OpenPandora

Example use of Qemu for running x86 code: Wine for PPC (per qemu usermode emulation)

There was some experience using Qemu to run the WINE x86 binary under Zaurus's ARM Debian: http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=14829

Qemu Backend success story: http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=13286 and http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=13330

Mixed topic, including ARM discussions: http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=67218

Some x86-to-ARM translation strategies were also discussed: http://forum.openhandhelds.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1088

Android running x86 wine and solitaire (by using ubuntu hack and binfmt) : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1258506

Winulator (Android APP) claims it is not wine-based, but does somewhat the same a Wine x86_2_ARM would do: http://docs.winulator.com/faq

win86emu is Bochs and DOSBox based and run x86 Applications on Windows RT

Limbo is an Intel x86 PC Emulator for Android based on QEMU,also uses code from android-vnc-viewer and glib among others: https://code.google.com/p/limbo-android/

Eltechs' ExaGear RPG ([1]) allows x86 applications to run on Android using wine.

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