plans for enabling hammerdb to fully run on aarch64

[abondarev84]

Hello,

I've found an old discussion from 2021 (a bit over 3 years ago) about running hammerdb on ARM Linux (#282).

Is there a plan or timeline for hammerdb to run on ARM Linux? has anything changed since the answer in the above discussion?

Thanks in advance

[sm-shaw]

Many thanks for re-raising this question and yes something has changed since the original discussion. The new version of Tcl/Tk version 9.0 has been released, and we are busy working on porting HammerDB to this release for both Windows and Linux x86_64 initially - this involves for example updating all the C extensions in the HammerDB lib directory (that can be built from source using Bawt in the build directory) - this is in progress and a HammerDB prototype is already running very well with Tcl/Tk 9 on Linux (with all compiled extensions) - although there is more work to do and a lot more testing.

And yes Tcl/Tk 9 supports aarch64 for both Linux and Windows as described by this thread https://sourceforge.net/p/tcl/mailman/tcl-core/thread/CAA40n-U3E%2B%2B0QbS3egQEP_a1fYvhE3suEFjxghOpt_2GtaSNRQ%40mail.gmail.com/#msg58820782 It is important that we maintain full compatibility and functionality for both Linux and Windows on potential platforms so it looks like Tcl/Tk 9.0 does do that - I know you mention Linux but having Windows on the same platform is important.

So, once the x86_64 version of HammerDB with Tcl/Tk 9.0 is released, this provides the potential platform to build for aarch64. This could be contributed, although if the demand is there once the x86_64 versions then this could also potentially become a core team project to provide pre-built binaries and is a good topic for discussion at the TPC-OSS subcommittee to decide if this is desirable and potential timelines.

So in summary, aarch64 is not planned for HammerDB v4 and therefore will not be immediate, the next version will be based on Tcl/Tk 9 so this will come first for x86_64 (and this is currently on the committed timeline) but if the demand is there subject to TPC-OSS subcommittee discussion then it could be a core project to provide an aarch64 release starting at the next major version. If this is the case, an issue will be created to progress. (Note, previously having aarch64 clients has been a blocker as most client development systems are x86_64).