Sublime Forum

ARM build?

#23

I would like to add my voice to support an arm build.

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#24

That’s closed source vendor lock-in biting you in the ass. Now that you’re hooked, you have to beg for platform support. :smiley:

Read this: The Free Software Definition

How many free software libraries were used in the development of Sublime? Switch to free software and compile for ARM any time you want.

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#25

Switching from x86 to ARM so I need and vote for the ARM version Sublime Text … until an ARM version ST will not exist, my license will be unused :frowning: … and I will have to find and use a different editor :frowning:

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#26

Another request for an armhf architecture (Raspberry Pi) build here, please… I ask also for all the other Raspberry community fans addicted to Sublime Text!

+1 ARM build!

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#27

I’ve been using sublime text on my macbook. I love it. It’s become my main app for coding. Having an arm package for ubuntu would be great, as I could then use it on my Chromebook.

+1 arm build

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#28

[quote=“locsmif”]

That’s closed source vendor lock-in biting you in the ass. Now that you’re hooked, you have to beg for platform support. :smiley:

Read this: The Free Software Definition

How many free software libraries were used in the development of Sublime? Switch to free software and compile for ARM any time you want.[/quote]

I tend to agree. There’s just about nothing in the open source repositories that won’t Just Compile on ARM. The developers claiming it’s too much time for too little return is a cop out.
Add my +1 to the request for an ARM port, but I’m not buying your excuse. Grab yourself a $35 Pi, compile a Linux version, and recover your $35 investment with the very first sale. You’ll get tons of publicity for doing it, because the Raspberry Pi is a very very hot topic nowadays, and you’ll get a ton of very young users who will learn to love your app from a young age and continue to promote it for years to come. It’s a no brainer in my book. Just do it.

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#29

Hello,

Just adding another +1 for an ARM build, I am also another already licensed user of sublime text.

  • Spencer
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#30

I already have a sublime text 2 licence. Been Using sublime text 3 for a while now. I am planning to buy Sublime Text 3, but I need arm7 support for my HP11 chromebook running Ubuntu via Crouton.

thanks!

+1 Arm

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#31

I too am a happy paying customer. I love Sublime Text, and since I just bought a Chromebook for working in the wilderness, I’d greatly appreciate an ARM build! Even if it came with the stipulation that it wouldn’t be officially supported until enough people were using it.

I am so excited to code while camping, and I hope to do it with Sublime Text!

Thanks for Sublime Text and for considering an ARM build!

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#32

I also own a license, and I would also really want to see an ARM build.

Great program otherwise.

-T.

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#33

Am user here, our company use sublime, and everybody has license.
We need Arm build to work on. :smile:

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#34

To sublime support,

Think of it like this: There is a strong need for a really good, lightweight GUI programming editor for Arm. What do you guys recommend we buy?

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#35

Keep in mind that if we find something that works with Arm and works equally well on the other platforms we use, then probably we will convert all our editors to that new editor.

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#36

Hi guys,

Just want to say one thing as why it’s so costly to develop for ARM. ARM isn’t really a single architecture. There are minor variations in instruction sets for different manufacturers. Which means a developer has to build separate binaries for each processor family and test seperately on each device. So you would need a separate binary for RPi, Chromebook, Beagleboard, etc…

This is why android apps are predominantly JAVA based. Running on a JVM means you don’t need to worry about underlying architecture/instruction set differences.

Even opensouce projects restrict official support for ARM devices because of this.

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#37

Intel isn’t really a single architecture either. You need to either compile for the lowest common denominator or detect cpu and other hardware features and enable or disable code accordingly.

Demand for arm is going up, not down, especially with these tablet/netbook combo deals out now. My interest for an arm version is primarily with Linux and single-board computers. I’m already a happy license owner for st2. You don’t have to work directly on the hardware, there’s an operating system under there that can handle some of this stuff for you. I don’t know of a Mac OS arm device with a keyboard, but Linux and Windows and Android are sure busy with that.

Get on odesk and see what’s out there for arm developers. I’m sure somebody is willing to sign an NDA, and some of those guys work pretty cheap. If I had the time I’d probably work on it for almost nothing, just to get an arm version out there.

The only way I can see this as overly complicated is if you write a lot of assembly code or bypass the operating system and try to access hardware directly. Frankly when you do either of those things, the app tends to be a single platform on a single operating system and never gets away from it, so I doubt you do that. Your existing ST2 code works well on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I’m not trying to be pushy here, but if your code were Open Source it would probably already work on most Arm versions, as well as ppc and some other bizarre stuff. I write commercial software for a living so I understand you have your license model and I respect it.

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#38

As far as that goes, if I had access to your source code there’s a bug in the way ST2 reads its .sublime-project that would be fixed by now, open source or not. It drives me nuts, I’ve posted here about it but it’s obviously not interesting enough for somebody there to do anything about it.

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#39

It’s not, but unlike ARM it’s mostly sane. You can test for instruction support, and most importantly, Intel doesn’t use the same machine code for different instructions
across different processor. This does happen with Intel vs AMD tho. Intel and AMD can’t match like for like when mapping machine code considering they’re both developing independently of each other. BUT, they do document these and compilers compile code that will work for both processing families.

When it comes to ARM, it’s a different kettle of fish. Due to the nature of ARM licensing, there are a huge number of different processor manufacturers out there that makes it nearly impossible to cover them all in the same fashion that you cover Intel and AMD differences, but, more importantly, many manufacturers DO NOT document their processors publicly, and instead opt to release a device specific compiler, making it impossible to do what you suggest.

This is exactly why Windows Phone support is restricted to a handful of processor, why Apple manufacture their own ARM CPUs and why android apps run on a VM.

Coding isn’t the issue here, it’s compiling and testing.

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#40

You’re an official support person? If so you can look at my email and contact me privately.

I don’t mean to roast you guys publicly, but there must be something we can do to get an arm build. Maybe we can brainstorm in a more private setting.

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#41

OK so for the record, there has been no contact to my email.

If things are so haphazard for arm, then it’s amazing anybody developed a product for it.

GCC is installed on my rpi in raspbian automatically, it works, and it’s reputed to generate pretty good code, at least for bigger processors. I would be amazed if it didn’t exist on EVERY other Linux-based arm OS.

Based on that, not knowing anything about sublime’s code because I haven’t seen it, I’m guessing that if sublime was written in C or in any of the languages typically supported by gcc, then the “wildly different architectures” argument holds little or no water. You (sublime) could just use the libraries which come along with Linux to support the Linux platform. If you don’t use gcc or open source libraries in your code for other platforms, then you need some sort of middleware, a thin facade that converts the library your sublime app expects into what open source libraries provide. I know exactly what that involves because I do it. Also, that guarantees that your closed-source code is protected from any toxic open source license, because you already have a non-open source library you’re using and you’re linking dynamically.

So how’s this for an idea?

  1. Build your closed-source product for a few specific arm processors, possibly using gcc if nothing else is available.

  2. Open-source the middleware library

  3. Let individual groups modify your middleware for specific platforms.

One thing that Open Source groups are really good at is porting something to a new platform. Sublime is about the best gui-based text editor out there, especially if you need a light one that’s tuned to your specific needs. It’s what arm-based nano-boxes need.

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#42

Another point: You could include tests in the middleware, such that people know when the middleware is sufficiently working to try the main editor.

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