InstallAware Ports Delphi-Facsimile Lazarus to ARM64.

The open-source Lazarus IDE, a virtual clone of Delphi, becomes the first-and-only Object Pascal compiler to support true ARM64; thanks to InstallAware’s leadership

Content/Source: InstallAware Software

San Francisco, CA, – InstallAware Software, the technology leader in software installation, repackaging, and virtualization solutions for app developers and enterprises, has delivered the first Windows ARM64 Object Pascal compiler. InstallAware is the most flexible platform for traditional and agile development teams creating Linux, macOS, Windows and Azure software installers; as well as MSIX, APPX, App-V Virtualization, and agentless/royalty-free InstallAware Virtualization packages.

For as long as five years before Apple Silicon, Windows already ran on ARM64 CPUs – with Visual Studio to match. Despite the exponentially growing adoption of the ARM64 CPU architecture, Delphi hasn’t had support for Desktop Windows ARM64 in over a decade (and counting). Thanks to its energy efficiency, ARM64 is far more popular than power guzzling x86 and x64 architectures, the latter of which have earned a bad reputation for running hot and noisy. Apple famously dumped Intel for this reason, and switched to ARM64 CPUs for its laptops (ceremoniously named Apple Silicon); reaping a huge boost in AI performance, and earning a penchant for running cool and quiet – even under heavy workloads.

“The open-source Free Pascal compiler that Lazarus is based on had been nearly ARM64-compatible for almost five years. But nearly isn’t good enough, and Delphi wasn’t getting anywhere,” says John Gaver, head of InstallAware Skunkworks. “We took leadership, and harnessed the power of open source: We rallied the community, and made a concerted team effort to get ARM64 outputs working! The result is a near-identical clone of Delphi, now running beautifully on Desktop Windows ARM64.” InstallAware has uploaded the results of its efforts to www.installaware.com/lazarus-arm64.msi, from where any developer may install a fully functional and completely free (as in beer) Delphi-facsimile for ARM64.

“Why do we care when Windows 10/11 on ARM64 already has near-excellent emulation of both x86 and x64 apps?” asks Mr. Gaver. “Many scenarios, such as shell extensions, require pure ARM64 support – and cannot be emulated. We made a case study out of just a scenario: DiskZIP, our patented (US 10,911,065) transparent compressor, has very deep, low-level Windows integration. Our ARM64 port runs wonderfully, proving that Free Pascal/Lazarus for ARM64 is production-ready; having survived this manner of industrial grade testing. We also found the porting process from Delphi to Lazarus to be very pleasant, completing the task in under two weeks – and that’s for a very complex codebase, evolving two decades and counting!”

InstallAware documented the porting process on its blog online at www.installaware.com/blog/?p=986, where InstallAware Skunkworks shared all they learned in getting Delphi code to compile with Lazarus. The blog post covers all aspects of the process in detail – from dipping toes in the water with automated Lazarus tools, to deep-in-the trenches edits of Lazarus project files – be it at the global, form, or unit level. There is hardly any challenge to moving over, and most porting tasks are nothing other than simple touch-ups to existing code. The blog post lists all best practices that the InstallAware Skunkworks team discovered as they were working on DiskZIP, including many helpful AI-enabled shortcuts.

A common source of confusion is between ARM64EC vs. ARM64. It has been publicly mentioned that the upcoming release of Delphi may have support for ARM64EC outputs. If true, this would be even more unfortunate news for developers needing true ARM64 support. ARM64EC is primarily intended to be x64 compatible, whereby ARM64EC code can be run by x64 apps, and/or ARM64EC apps can run legacy x64 code. The drawback of this compatibility approach is that ARM64EC code can NOT be executed by true ARM64 apps – making it entirely useless for all scenarios that do require actual ARM64 support. If Delphi did indeed debut with ARM64EC support to the exclusion of true ARM64, that would be an irony indeed.

About InstallAware Software

InstallAware Software, founded in 2003, is the leading Cloud Infrastructure Company with its laser sharp focus on bullet-proof enterprise software deployment and repackaging – now supporting Linux and macOS targets as first-class citizens, in addition to Windows. InstallAware has been recognized by multiple awards coming from Microsoft, SDTimes “Leader of the Software Development Industry”, and Visual Studio Magazine Reader’s Choice Gold Award, among other recognition. InstallAware X18 is available in a free edition for all Visual Studio users, and paid editions with prices starting at $474. For a fully functional 14-day trial and more information, visit www.installaware.com.

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Content/Source: InstallAware Software