Building an Arch Linux Aarch64 Port for Holo Core
a day ago
- #aarch64
- #Linux
- #SteamOS
- Valve uses an adapted version of Arch Linux in its products, and Collabora has been working on Holo Core, a pure aarch64 port of Arch Linux for the Steam Frame, which uses an aarch64 CPU.
- Since Arch Linux does not officially support aarch64, the team has developed tooling and CI infrastructure to enable the port, including publishing binaries, sources, and development containers for exploration.
- The port involves complex challenges like ensuring reproducible builds in CI, calculating correct build orders due to Arch's rolling-release model, handling SONAME transitions, and dealing with outdated upstream sources and infrastructure issues.
- The released package tree serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating that the tooling can produce a functional package tree for product launches, with plans to track Arch Linux developments continuously and collaborate on upstream aarch64 porting efforts.
- The preview allows experimentation on aarch64 hosts or via containers on x86_64 hosts, with setup instructions for QEMU emulation and distrobox, enabling users to build packages like coreutils in the aarch64 environment.