Support ARM operating systems about tinytex-releases

[colearendt]

Nice, thanks! actions/runner-images#2187 suggested that buildjet.com may have an option, and we also do have some self-hosted runners internally that could potentially help (although I believe it is mostly used for private repos at present). I'm definitely hopeful we can make progress on this as we add ARM support for our R, Python, and product builds 😄 I'll do some poking internally

[vk496]

you can do that directly on any x86 host!

Using Docker and https://github.com/multiarch/qemu-user-static you can easily buid & run on any architecture without the need of native host (or cross compiling)

[vk496]

Yep, found it!

https://github.com/nfc-tools/mfoc-hardnested/blob/master/.github/workflows/build.yml

Hope it's useful :)

[yihui]

The M1 macOS runner won't help, since TeX Live only has the universal-darwin version for macOS:

> tinytex:::.tl_platforms
 [1] "aarch64-linux"       "amd64-freebsd"       "amd64-netbsd"        "armhf-linux"        
 [5] "i386-freebsd"        "i386-linux"          "i386-netbsd"         "i386-solaris"       
 [9] "universal-darwin"    "windows"             "x86_64-cygwin"       "x86_64-darwinlegacy"
[13] "x86_64-linux"        "x86_64-linuxmusl"    "x86_64-solaris"   

What we need is ARM Linux runners, which I don't know if Github Action will ever support. The emulator mentioned by @vk496 is probably the best way to go.

[yihui]

We don't, mainly because Github Actions doesn't support these operating systems

• actions/runner-images#5631
• actions/runner-images#2187

It's beyond my expertise to figure out how to build TinyTeX binaries for ARM operating systems on x84 platforms. If anyone can help, I'll be eager to work on it.

[yihui]

Thanks! If we have self-hosted runners and I can use them, I'd definitely love to build more types of TinyTeX binaries!

[yihui]

@vk496 That sounds like exactly what we need! Thanks a lot for the tip!

[vk496]

Sorry, I was not able to find a example that I did before. But essentially, you can do a basic Dockerfile that build as expected and then some script to enforce the architecture in some well-supported base image that have that architecture (ubuntu, debian, alpine, ....)

I think I did that with Travis, but can be done easily anywhere (maybe someone already did the work in the github workflows). If I found it, I will post it here

Salu2

[cderv]

Really interesting ! thanks for sharing !

[cderv]

I have seen update on Github where M1 is now available:

• https://github.blog/2023-10-02-introducing-the-new-apple-silicon-powered-m1-macos-larger-runner-for-github-actions/