Add support for aarch64 release builds

My team recently encountered a situation where we needed to run the azure-pipelines-agent on an aarch64 (ARM 64bit) device.

At this time, the official release builds only support:

• Windows x86/64
• macOS
• Linux x64/ARM32

We were able to install and run the Linux ARM32 release flavor by installing the armhf dependencies on an aarch64 device (Jetson TX2), however, it would be nice to have first class support for this architecture due to it’s prevalence in the IoT space (Raspberry Pi 3B+, PINE64, Nividia Jetson etc.).

#Install the ARM32 gcc toolchain
sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf

#Symlink the armhf ld kernel module (this allows loading ARM32 bins on ARM64 OS and comes with the ARM32 toolchain)
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3

#Add arm-linux-gnueabihf libs to LD_LIBRARY_PATH 
#(This tells ld where it can find libs in addition to the default /lib dir,
#Point it to the default path for armhf libs
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/"

#OR For a persistent version of the above
#Symlink the relevant kernel modules
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libdl.so.2 /lib/libdl.so.2
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libpthread.so /lib/libpthread.so
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libpthread.so.0 /lib/libpthread.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libstdc++.so.6 /lib/libstdc++.so.6
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libm.so.6 /lib/libm.so.6
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libc.so.6 /lib/libc.so.6
sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/librt.so.1 /lib/librt.so.1

#Enable installation of armhf packages
dpkg --add-architecture armhf

#Install armhf version of libcurl and libicu
apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev:armhf libicu55:armhf

#Install dotnet core (aarch 64 build prolly works here too)
wget https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/10b96626-02d8-415a-be85-051a2a48d0c2/5ec51d3d9f092ba558fb5f1f03d26699/dotnet-sdk-2.1.403-linux-arm.tar.gz
mkdir -p $HOME/dotnet && tar zxf dotnet-sdk-2.1.403-linux-arm.tar.gz -C $HOME/dotnet
export DOTNET_ROOT=$HOME/dotnet
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/dotnet

[azimuthdeveloper]

@lewcianci no plans for a hosted pool.

I find that strange considering that Microsoft has invested quite heavily in IoT and yet we can’t use the build agents to build ARM64 images natively and have to use QEMU to build instead. But it’s perhaps not in high enough demand yet 😄

Thanks for getting back to me

[vtbassmatt]

Update: I have ordered hardware to serve as our build farm, and we’re also working on a new PR to add this support. Especially with the pandemic ongoing, I think we’re still several weeks away from any new news, but things are happening!