Customers targeting ARM64 can use a package manager to fetch/update packages from a feed and don’t have to do this manually

[jamshedd]

• Enable platform installers for Ubuntu Arm32 runtime#2401

• Create package for Raspberry Pi OS (ARM64 and ARM32) runtime#3263

[danmoseley]

@jamshedd I'd like to change the title to "XX's can YY" format but I'm not sure what "ARM64 user" is in this context. Is it a developer creating an app? A user deploying an app? Or something else.

[NikolaMilosavljevic]

Related issue for musl arm32v7: dotnet/runtime#46954

[lukemcdo]

Oh whew, this is more focused on the RPI than I expected. Should I add issues for platform targets I'm hoping for?

In particular, my use case is building packages that depend on the .NET 6 runtime package for the Linux-focused PinePhone. The upcoming "default" distribution for the PinePhone is Arch-based, which isn't a .NET target right now (that's fine, expected). However, Ubuntu and (obviously) RPI OS are some of the OSes with no presence on the PinePhone (Ubuntu Touch is substantially different than Ubuntu with regards to packaging).

While my wishlist would be all of the targets, I would hope that at least one of the following is possible, packaging at least the runtime, ideally the SDK where applicable. I've ordered the list of useful targets in seeming order of popularity, as I best understand it as an active PinePhone community member:

1. Arch ARM64
2. Alpine ARM64
3. Debian (upstream Bullseye) ARM64, for Mobian
4. OpenSUSE ARM64

In particular, the Debian Bullseye sticks out. If the Raspberry Pi OS ARM64 build is clean of Raspberry Pi specific dependencies, it could just be a Debian repository that's focused on Raspberry Pi OS, but also works on generic Debian.

[nic547]

Any updates on this?

Currently the acquisition of .NET on a ARM64 linux system is annoying at best.
With ARM expanding into the server space in the last few years this seems like a bit of an oversight.

At the same time systems like the raspberry pi remain quite popular - ensuring that potential future developers don't get a bad first impression would seem like a worthwhile effort too.

[MichaelSimons]

@nic547 - are there particular distros you would like ARM64 packages for? The reason I ask is because the number of distros that include .NET in their native feeds has been increasing with each release. If .NET is in the native package feed, would you still want to pull packages the Packages.Microsoft.com?

[nic547]

@MichaelSimons
Personally I'd like to see ARM64 packages for Debian.
I could see myself using microsoft.packages.com over a distro feed in case #5445 happens, but that's probably not a common scenario. Otherwise a distros native package feed would probably be preferable.

[DM-Francis]

I'd also be interested in this. I recently deployed a .NET app to my raspberry pi and have been struggling to find a way to automate security updates for the runtime. If there were dotnet packages in the Debian repo that would be ideal, otherwise using microsoft.packages.com would also be good.

[Aldaviva]

I got tired of waiting, so I made my own public APT package repository of armhf and arm64 .NET DEB packages for Raspberry Pi OS. These packages use the official Linux binaries built by Microsoft, and are automatically updated when new .NET versions are released.

If you like, you can install these packages on your Raspberry Pis too by following these instructions.

CC: dotnet/runtime#3263 dotnet/runtime#3298 dotnet/sdk#21447