Building Pale Moon for Windows10 ARM32 Topic is solved

[hectorantonio]

Hi, been reading a lot and took the time to try and figure out what's the best place in the forum to ask this question, this seemed like the place. Please allow me to explain:

I'm interested on building Pale Moon Browser for Windows 10 ARM 32 for use on the Surface RT (using an ARM Tegra 3 processor). I already read the instructions here: http://developer.palemoon.org/build/windows/ and I'm pretty clear about that and I'm about to download everything and try myself, but my question is trying to explore if someone knows... if it's actually possible to build this browser for Windows 10 on ARM32. Visual Studio (since 2012) allows building apps for ARM32, specially C++, but this is not exactly known worldwide. After performing the specific modifications to Visual Studio, many have been able to port or just rebuild their apps so they can run on Windows 10 ARM32, and we have some of them already, but web browsers are a bit tricky. I don't know if the instructions on the building/for/Windows page leave room to replace the architecture specifics for ARM32 strings and so, getting an ARM32 version of the browser.

I know it's very probable that this question comes as "difficult to answer" because many developers don't know about Visual Studio capabilities to build for ARM, I'm not exactly aiming for someone to answer this specifically, I'm mostly curious about the compatibility of Pale Moon components. My guess is, it's possible, given that this browser still supports Windows XP and so I read and watched several sources describing it, sounds like a big compatibility possibility. After researching and some attempts, I'm mostly interested on building browsers using Visual Studio instead of Linux cross compilers because the experience hasn't been positive, despite the apps being built and run (but way limited or crashing).

I don't expect a guarantee, but instead a kind comment on the topic from a developer perspective. I have experience coding desktop and server systems, but not regarding building apps in this sense. I will appreciate any help.



Just to bring some light about Windows 10 ARM32. The Surface RT was launched running Windows 8/8.1 RT (for ARM32) but Microsoft left the device to die. Recently a Windows 10 version ended up available and so now it runs on many Surface RT devices (I own one) and now we have multiple apps running already ported, like Filezilla, notepad++, Paint.net, etc. But building a browser remains as a tricky and difficult task.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Ain't gonna happen.

[Tohuwabohuix]

...My guess is, it's possible, given that this browser still supports Windows XP...

Pale Moon doesn't support Windows XP anymore since Pale Moon ver. 27.0.0
Search for "Windoes XP" on:
https://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes-archived.shtml

[hectorantonio]

Thanks for approving the topic.

...My guess is, it's possible, given that this browser still supports Windows XP...

Pale Moon doesn't support Windows XP anymore since Pale Moon ver. 27.0.0
Search for "Windoes XP" on:
https://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes-archived.shtml

Oh, thanks, I got my sources wrong or just outdated.

Ain't gonna happen.

I imagined it would be the case, thanks. If you could elaborate a bit I would appreciate it (so I can have a wider picture and use that knowledge on other stuff that I'm researching as possibilities).

I have learned (the hard way) that many cross platform projects are not fully cross-platform, specifics sometimes make it impossible for the apps to be built for other systems. The downside is sometimes takes weeks, days and hours just to set up the environment just to realize one minimal (or big) part doesn't compile or build and causes the whole project to fail.

Thanks everyone.

[Moonchild]

If you could elaborate a bit

Any target processor architecture requires all code to have a compatible code path. We have a lot of platform-specific code in our tree, not in the least the widget code to draw system-specific window decorations and interact with window managers. That is very much dependent on underlying hardware. You might call that "not really cross-platform" but unless you write your program in some kind of meta language and offload all the lower OSI stuff to ready-made libraries that are already supplied by your DE, you need to write specific code for each O.S. on that target processor architecture. UXP is not an RT or .NET application -- it is low level C++ and a good smattering of ASM for hot paths.

So as Tobin said: that ain't gonna happen. Certainly not for 32-bits of anything.

[hectorantonio]

If you could elaborate a bit

Any target processor architecture requires all code to have a compatible code path. We have a lot of platform-specific code in our tree, not in the least the widget code to draw system-specific window decorations and interact with window managers. That is very much dependent on underlying hardware. You might call that "not really cross-platform" but unless you write your program in some kind of meta language and offload all the lower OSI stuff to ready-made libraries that are already supplied by your DE, you need to write specific code for each O.S. on that target processor architecture. UXP is not an RT or .NET application -- it is low level C++ and a good smattering of ASM for hot paths.

So as Tobin said: that ain't gonna happen. Certainly not for 32-bits of anything.

Thanks Moonchild for your time.

So far only Otter Browser was possible to build (and run on Windows 10ARM32) but there are memory leaks on mid/heavy Javascript websites, otherwise it works (using QT and C++). It's been a long road reading and reading finding possible options. Will keep searching.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

It's been a long road reading and reading finding possible options. Will keep searching.

Why not just get and use a real computer?

[hectorantonio]

It's been a long road reading and reading finding possible options. Will keep searching.

Why not just get and use a real computer?

Most of us in the group have several computers, from normal to powerful and collectors pieces. Hacking and modding is fun. And 2 of your posts same thread, were not helpful at all. I anticipate a third one, a one-liner again.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

So it was not helpful because it was not the answer you wanted? However, it was the actual answer to your overly verbose and misinformed if not ignorant opening post. Moonchild's expanded explaination did NOT negate that regardless of your implication that it did.

You wanted a longer answer than one line from me? Well I want to know who you are and this, once again, mysterious group is. Why you want to use our technology on low power custom systems with a restrictive instruction set and operating environment we don't support and some, like my self, don't even agree with?

Who are you to determine what level of detail of my answers is acceptably helpful and also demand the disposition of those answers. That sounds awfully self-entitled to me.

Fact is your anticipation is irrelevant and you already have your answer. Is there anything else I can help you with?