Page Comparison

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WIP - “lite” working with some patches. “Release” needs dependencies enabling first, which is WIP.

Dependencies

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Known Limitations

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

Compiling notes

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

Currently the following native libraries/programs are required to be present in the vc15_win64 folder (all buildable via vcpkg bar python, which uses the native installer, and a copy-paste from that directory):

• 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

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 semi-release 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. Some dependencies are enabled via this script, but not enough to consider it a full “release”.

To use:

• Ensure you have VS2022 + CMake (>=3.24, which supports ARM64 hosts) installed on an ARM64 hostSet up arm64 wenv: https://gitlab.com/Linaro/windowsonarm/wenv/

• Clone repo

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

• Wait for built build to complete

Contributing changes to internal fork

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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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the artifacts produced from our nightly build of blender: https://woastorage.blob.core.windows.net/packages/blender/blender_woa.zip

Make sure you read KNOWN LIMITATIONS above.