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Anthony Roberts

Anthony Roberts

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Currently building/launching is problematic, and requires manually copying DLLs at various points when the build process errors out. There are also many assumptions within blender’s codebase that “Windows == x64”, which needs to be worked out.

Compiling notes

NOTE: This must be done on a WoA machine - cross-compiling is not yet supported.

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  • freetype (freetype.lib must be copied, with new file name freetype2ST.lib)

  • zstd (zstd.lib must be copied and renamed to zstd_static.lib)

  • zlib (zlib.lib must be copied and renamed to libz_st.lib)

  • pthreads

  • libpng (folder renamed to “png” + libpng16.lib must be copied and renamed to libpng.lib)

  • libjpeg-turbo (folder renamed to “jpeg” + jpeg.lib must be copied and renamed to libjpeg.lib)

  • brotli (uses arm64-windows-static target)

  • libepoxy (folder renamed to “epoxy”)

  • python

Compilation can also be done by just downloading the below zip file and executing the contained “build.bat” from a CMD window.

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NOTE: We will ultimately move away from VCPKG, as the blender foundation will not accept it, and requires the dependencies be built manually using their CMake scripts. DO NOT GET TO RELY ON VCPKG FEATURES SUCH AS CMAKE TARGETS, ETC.

Compiling via build script

There is a build script written, which takes care of many of the interim steps required to build and run the lite version of Blender, available here: https://gitlab.com/Linaro/windowsonarm/packages/blender/-/tree/master/

It currently pulls our internal fork of blender, which has patches applied that are required to compile/run Blender.

To use:

  • Ensure you have VS2022 + CMake (>=3.24, which supports ARM64 hosts) installed on an ARM64 host

  • Clone repo

  • Execute build.bat from a plain cmd terminal - ie, not a vcvarsall instance! Plain powershell is also ok

  • Wait for built to complete

Contributing changes to internal fork

If you wish to contribute changes to our internal fork, you may do so by making a merge request for your changes here: https://gitlab.com/Linaro/windowsonarm/forks/blender/

The build script automatically clones this repo into a folder named “blender”.

If you have any questions, queries, or concerns, contact Anthony Roberts

Running

Download ZIP file below, and run blender exe as normal. May require native python (tested with 3.11rc2) being installed and on the path.

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