Windows 10 on Arm #3741

Ah yes, ARM seems like a good target to support as it's likely the future of computing.

From that article, it seems like there are a few hurdles to overcome:

• Node 12 is recommended, which we can't use until we upgrade electron [Build] Update Electron #1847
• Will likely need an ARM CI environment to build within (does GH Actions support Windows ARM?)

It seems like it should be fairly trivial after these two things are in place (knock on wood).

I was able to build it without issue on a CentOS 8 x64 Intel system running node v10.16.3

git clone https://github.com/Kong/insomnia.git
cd insomnia
npm explore npm -g -- npm install node-gyp@latest
yum install libcurl-devel fontconfig-devel
set npm_config_arch=arm64
npm run bootstrap
npm run app-build

Of course, it built it for Linux arm64, so not terribly useful unless you're running Linux. Will try to build it on Windows 10 x64 Intel next.

Didn't have much luck with Windows 10. Crashed during packaging. I think it's related to electron-builder. It would build for x64_x86, but crash when specifying arm64 as a target.

What about building this for RaspberryPi? Seems like it should be similar since it's ARM as well.... Also Apple shipped ARM macs so it seems ARM really should be figured out.

As FYI, I've made a specific ticket to track ARM M1 support over here: #2964

For other types of ARM support, there is this if it's needed: https://github.blog/changelog/2019-12-03-github-actions-self-hosted-runners-on-arm-architectures/ But I imagine cross-compiling, like on macOS for ARM, is also an option these days.
There's some recent interest in getting ARM for Windows builds running under Github Actions: actions/runner#785

Not sure if it helps much, as I'm not familiar with current Electron code, but here's some of what Microsoft did with VS Code to support ARM in various flavours: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/d1fff1a08360f0d35f124c990dc65a6bccd748d2/build/lib/electron.js#L85 and https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/7d57a8f6f546b5e30027e7cfa87bd834eb5c7bbb/resources/linux/snap/electron-launch#L9-L12 etc. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/a5f84617e22e6e32afc18a808828f1e233361244/build/gulpfile.vscode.linux.js#L260-L264 for Linux
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/a5f84617e22e6e32afc18a808828f1e233361244/build/gulpfile.vscode.win32.js#L137-L139 for Windows

... ah, actually the best thing to look for in VS Code's build toolchain is probably VSCODE_ARCH as in the number of times it appears in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/b7aa0f7d406430a388e02b011222cb8e0ea565de/build/azure-pipelines/product-build.yml for their use of Azure Pipelines - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/blog/announcing-azure-pipelines-with-unlimited-ci-cd-minutes-for-open-source/ That said they appear to compile on Linux x64 first and presumably use qemu to run other architectures' build steps on Linux, so they don't need to natively use ARM, it looks like... https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/b7aa0f7d406430a388e02b011222cb8e0ea565de/build/azure-pipelines/product-build.yml#L14-L47

On my Windows ARM (Surface), Insomnia is barely usable. Time to ditch it.
It looks like there are alternatives: Bruno or Yaak are both open source and Windows ARM64 native.