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I think you missed the point. What about all the dependencies of your code that are only compiled for x86_64? The article isn't talking about native apps on the

I think you missed the point. What about all the dependencies of your code that are only compiled for x86_64? The article isn't talking about native apps on the laptop, it's about apps that run on a server but that you are developing locally. You can't run your x86 docker image on your ARM mac without emulation. You can't run your x86 Windows VM without emulation etc. Of course there are solutions like using a remote server or a VM in the cloud, but if you're buying a decent machine then you would normally expect to be able to run these things locally.

acdha 6y ago
Do you have any examples of this? The last time I tried an AWS ARM server, it was literally no modification other than changing the server type — Linux has run on ARM for many years and Apple is far from the first company to use the platform. For example, back in 2017 Cloudflare was basically looking at this as a question of which hardware ran most cost-effectively rather than having engineering heroics first: https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/
- user5994461 6y ago
  I want to say Oracle database clients as an example. My company definitely had problems to get database drivers to work generally speaking and on both 32 bits and 64 bits. Have a look at postgres, oracle, cassandra, redis, sybase to name a few, I am not sure which one was worse, it wasn't me doing the work. But I've seen some of the C and C++ dependencies that needed to compile with the errors that happened and that was horrendous.
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    That’s a good moment to make your c/c++ code more robust, and cross-platform, like the languages they are
    - user5994461 6y ago
      The problem wasn't in our code, it was in the database code that was either from open source or from a vendor. If you want a sample. Try to install the cassandra client library in python. It will pull in and compile all sort of shit. That's supposed to be python and easily cross platform.
      - jbverschoor 6y ago
        Yes, so time for them to clean up their mess ;)
        etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
        Reading the comments here flow something like this: 1. complain that switching to ARM is a mess 2. no it's not a mess, it's easy 3. no, see it's a mess 4. fine, clean up the mess. Yes, we should clean up the mess! It doesn't mean it's not a mess. And I think the mess is actually still understated.
        stickupkid 6y ago
        I think it will come down to PRs accepted. So it's your mess in the end as it depends on the companies strategy.
  - smspf 6y ago
    I've been using postgres, cassandra, redis and mysql/mariadb on aarch64. Only ran into issues with MySQL, which we rootcaused to some weird atomic locks not working as expected on the first generation of ARMv8(.0) a couple years back.
  - acdha 6y ago
    Fair enough — I've used Oracle's products enough to know that software distribution and packaging is not a priority there.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Mono and .NET Core run terribly on ARM. I have several containerized C# apps that I need to run on x86_64 hosts, because on ARM they'll just crash randomly.
rblatz 6y ago
AWS has put out some very impressive ARM instances running on the Graviton2 processors. The reviews I read show better performance per dollar. So maybe the solution is to further embrace ARM and run your code on ARM servers?
zekrioca 6y ago
This will always be a problem, unless one emulates the x86_64 architecture, which is then again the other problem w/ Docker. I assume main libraries (i.e. dependencies) are already or will be ported, so theoretically recompilation should work for many, although not the most applications. Other applications will need to either change dependencies, or port dependencies to enable full performance.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
monadic2 6y ago
Why not re-compile the dependencies so they run locally too? Am I missing some constraint?

acdha 6y ago

Do you have any examples of this? The last time I tried an AWS ARM server, it was literally no modification other than changing the server type — Linux has run on ARM for many years and Apple is far from the first company to use the platform. For example, back in 2017 Cloudflare was basically looking at this as a question of which hardware ran most cost-effectively rather than having engineering heroics first: https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/

user5994461 6y ago
I want to say Oracle database clients as an example. My company definitely had problems to get database drivers to work generally speaking and on both 32 bits and 64 bits. Have a look at postgres, oracle, cassandra, redis, sybase to name a few, I am not sure which one was worse, it wasn't me doing the work. But I've seen some of the C and C++ dependencies that needed to compile with the errors that happened and that was horrendous.
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  That’s a good moment to make your c/c++ code more robust, and cross-platform, like the languages they are
  - user5994461 6y ago
    The problem wasn't in our code, it was in the database code that was either from open source or from a vendor. If you want a sample. Try to install the cassandra client library in python. It will pull in and compile all sort of shit. That's supposed to be python and easily cross platform.
    - jbverschoor 6y ago
      Yes, so time for them to clean up their mess ;)
      - etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
        Reading the comments here flow something like this: 1. complain that switching to ARM is a mess 2. no it's not a mess, it's easy 3. no, see it's a mess 4. fine, clean up the mess. Yes, we should clean up the mess! It doesn't mean it's not a mess. And I think the mess is actually still understated.
      - stickupkid 6y ago
        I think it will come down to PRs accepted. So it's your mess in the end as it depends on the companies strategy.
- smspf 6y ago
  I've been using postgres, cassandra, redis and mysql/mariadb on aarch64. Only ran into issues with MySQL, which we rootcaused to some weird atomic locks not working as expected on the first generation of ARMv8(.0) a couple years back.
- acdha 6y ago
  Fair enough — I've used Oracle's products enough to know that software distribution and packaging is not a priority there.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Mono and .NET Core run terribly on ARM. I have several containerized C# apps that I need to run on x86_64 hosts, because on ARM they'll just crash randomly.

rblatz 6y ago

AWS has put out some very impressive ARM instances running on the Graviton2 processors. The reviews I read show better performance per dollar. So maybe the solution is to further embrace ARM and run your code on ARM servers?

zekrioca 6y ago

This will always be a problem, unless one emulates the x86_64 architecture, which is then again the other problem w/ Docker. I assume main libraries (i.e. dependencies) are already or will be ported, so theoretically recompilation should work for many, although not the most applications. Other applications will need to either change dependencies, or port dependencies to enable full performance.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

monadic2 6y ago

Why not re-compile the dependencies so they run locally too? Am I missing some constraint?