nrf Util: when will the Linux Arm64 be released?

[charles.g]

Hi all,

I'm looking into speeding up my workflow using remote development containers on ARM servers, but it seems some tools are missing, nrfutil the first, to run a fully fledge dev environment. I saw there's a MacOS version for ARM64, I'd imagine the hardest has already been made? When do you plan on releasing it for Linux?

Do you know any other tool that won't like working on ARM?

Cheers,

Charles

[Hung Bui]

Hi Charles, 
Unfortunately the status now is still it's not supported and we don't have the ETA yet. 
I would suggest to send your request to our local RSM so that it get more priority in the list. 

[Ben K]

This is also a big blocking issue for those of us with Windows on ARM OS. I'm able to use Zephyr's own SDK by using their Linux aarch64 toolchain on WSL2, but the nRF Connect tools are completely unavailable for both Windows and Linux ARM64. I hope this gets proper traction with the emerging popularity of ARM laptops.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Benedek, 

The latest info I got from the team was that they are working on it. But I don't know when it's available. 

[Ben K]

Just to give a status report, it is already possible to fully develop and deploy embedded applications on Windows on ARM (in WSL2) with the Zephyr toolchain, with certain caveats:

1. I need to use west command line to prepare and build the application, nRF Connect SDK vscode extension isn't useful, since its toolchain manager isn't supported.
2. WSL has support for USB tunneling via an external library, but that uses VirtualBox Windows drivers that aren't compatible with ARM64, therefore flashing and debugging must happen on the Windows side. SEGGER Ozone debugger can be installed on Windows, with the right configuration file it works fine with the binaries and sources in the WSL filesystem.
3. Not all J-Link probes support ARM64, specifically only those which can be configured for WinUSB operation instead of legacy SEGGER drivers.

[charles.g]

Exactly Ben, the installation of the core tools for compiling on Linux ARM64, even including the nrf Command Line tool and debugging works in/from WSL or in a container.

The example Dockerfile Nordic uses for testing is even ready to support it, there are mentions of arm64. If only nrfutil was open source, we could probably give a hand (wait, wasn't it?).