Building for Linux ARM

Unity Engine
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Hello!

Is it possible to do Unity build for ARM? The specific processor I have in mind is:

ARM v8.2 64-bit NVIDIA Carmel CPU

It resides in Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier: AI-Powered Autonomous Machines at Scale | NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier

If no, what kind of work should be done / is required to make it support?

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well, i guess it’s not impossible at all, since Godot 3 is available to armel, armhf and arm64, from Debian’s repository? Debian -- Package Search Results -- godot - and better, since Unity actually supports arm-based hardware?

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We… we… can build Unity ourselves with custom parameters? What, since when?

Isn’t Unity like closed source thing?

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what i could understand is that part of Unity is open-source because it uses Mono, and it’s always great that is using it (but not software-libre, since it’s using Mono, and Mono is not software-libre because the license used ) - the other part, i just have no idea at all, since i’m mostly software-libre user… - considering this, i guess Unity for GNU/Linux could be available to architectures like Sparc, Mips, PowerPC, Arm, etc., as “easily” as those actually supported i386 and amd64

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Neither Unity editor nor Linux standalone support ARM.

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Hello @Schubkraft
I just saw your answer concerning the ARM support. Is it in your scope ?
Or at least is it possible to manage it ourself by using the lib etc… with a specific makefile (I don’t think it’s possible but I try the question…)

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Sadly this is not something you can do yourself, sorry.

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And there is no ETA or plan from your side ? (I know the answer is not but I try again)

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There is currently no plan, sorry again.

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No worry !
Thanks again for your reactivity. We will evaluate other possibilities from our side.

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Hello @Schubkraft
If you don’t mind me asking, why exactly is Linux Arm64 (aka AArch64) not part of the current plans? Is there a place where I could put a kind feature request on that?

I am a software dev in a private company as well as an NGO, and both have to work around this limitation of Unity by doing projects in Unreal Engine, when possible, or rethinking the possibilities, like @aurelien-morel-ubiant

Obviously the editor is too much work, and doesn’t make sense to have the unity editor running on arm-64, but a unity standalone build? That should be fairly straight forward for you guys.

Yes, the different embedded boards might be slightly different, and you might have to focus on one hardware, like the jetson board, like requested in this forum post, but even that would be already a good start.

Unreal did that in their current version because the community wanted that (I’m happy to say I was part of that). Hope Unity won’t fall behind in terms of flexibility, because that’s to me the ultimate advantage of unity. There is market for embedded and IOT, and linux arm-64 is a pretty nice platform to develop for.

Even raspberry pi is now arm-64. How amazing it would be for education to have Unity building for Raspberry PI!!! My Non profit would surely be using that functionality from day 1.

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WHEN WILL UNITY SUPPORT…LINUX + ARM ???

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Unity now supports Magic Leap which I believe uses an ARM processor running a Linux based system called Lumin OS. Has anyone tried to publish to Lumin OS and run the app on Linux?

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interesting thread.
i am going to try this on my jetson nano (ubuntu 18)

ill post here if i get it working.

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Magic Leap is an Android based build target. The Linux Standalone runtime doesn’t touch anything there.

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The important thing to note in this conversation is that Nintendo Switch is supported as a Unity build target and uses ARM linux. Nintendo likely has no interest in seeing competition in their market.

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Super interesting topic, definitely +1 for Linux ARM build support.

With the high prices of GPU Cloud Clusters and Nvidia’s Jetson around… the need for this will scale from Pi hobbyists to cloud compute corporate stuff (ML/Simulations/…)

The political conflicts here are obvious (hi Google Cloud), but as Unity stands for democratisation and all platforms deployment…

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crogersarvr, please let us know if anbox works. I’d really like to be able to use Unity for my nvidia jetson boards.

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Now that Unity (in 2020.2) will add support for Apple Silicon ARM / MacOS targets, perhaps adding support for ARM / Linux is doable as well? I bet the bulk of the work of the port is done with the support for Apple Silicon ARM / MacOS…

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There is change in support at the moment for Linux and Arm.

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