In a recent blog post, ZDNet's Jason Perlow suggested that the main obstacle to Windows on Arm is the hardware. If only the hardware were available, we could have a great experience because the software and developer tools are ready. This is simply not true when you consider the state of developer tools on Windows for Arm.
Microsoft's official developer toolchain is quite bad on Arm. Microsoft doesn't provide Arm versions of Visual Studio, VS Build Tools, or even just Microsoft Visual C++; they expect Arm developers to cross-compile C++ software on an x86 host or emulate x86 software.
There is native Arm support for .NET and VS Code, but this doesn't help C++ developers. Since MSVC is closed source, the only way to get native support for MSVC on Arm is for Microsoft to implement it. See Visual Studio Feedback
The open source situation isn't any better. There are no Arm implementations of the MinGW or MSYS development environments; therefore, no Arm GCC or Arm Clang toolchain is available yet on Windows, either. There are feature requests open for them to add native Arm support, but it is not ready yet. If you go to Arm's website, they have a page where you can download MinGW GCC for an x86 device to cross-compile for an Arm device. It really says something when the only way to compile your product on Windows is to use a competitor's product.
Another popular C++ compiler on Windows is the Intel C++ compiler (ICC). This is not available on Arm for obvious reasons, and it requires Visual Studio to be installed anyway. Therefore, 0 out of 4 popular C++ compilers are available for Arm Windows.
There is no Arm native Windows version of Python yet, either. However, this will likely be resolved sometime this year: See Issue 33125: Windows 10 ARM64 platform support - Python tracker
You might be wondering why it is so important to have native Arm support for compilers. Many developers already cross-compile from their computers to other devices when developing software for smartphones or consoles, so why can't they do the same with Arm Windows devices? They can, but it's a second-class experience.
Read more:
Why Windows isn't ready for Arm developers
Cross-compilers aren't good enough if you want to encourage developers to port apps for Windows on Arm.
www.zdnet.com
