Will there be an ARM version of libspotify released for Windows 8 RT developers?
Libspotify
Unfortunately, at the moment there's no answer to that question. We're aware of the need for one, though, and it's something we're investigating.
I've built despotify on several architectures that lacks official Spotify support (Linux PPC, Linux ARM etc), perhaps that is something that could give you a jumpstart until the proprietary library is released.
Related
Question 1
If I want to build an application with OpenCL support, do I have any guarantees that the OpenCL.lib implementation from my vendor is able to work with all devices from other Vendors? If yes what's the difference between the implementation?
Question 2
Is it possible to use different OpenCL versions in the same application? For example AMD has released a preview driver for OpenCL 2.0 support. On the other hand the lovely company called Nvidia is still trying to ignore everything past OpenCL 1.1. It would be nice if I could write platform specific code in different versions.
1: On Windows, OpenCL.lib is a static wrapper around OpenCL.dll, which is the ICD loader, and exposes all of the available platforms. It is provided by Khronos and redistributed by the OpenCL platform vendors. So go ahead and link to it; it will work with whatever is installed (although if nothing is installed your application won't run because it can't find OpenCL.dll; this is solved other ways).
2: Yes. As long as the ICD loader is the latest, you can get at the newer API on newer platforms / devices. Just don't use new API on old devices; that will crash or worse.
I have a few programs I'd really like to test on Windows 8 for ARM. I don't have any Windows 8 ARM hardware though. Is it possible to install Windows 8 in some kind of ARM emulator or some such?
Yes, I know that if it compiles on WinRT it is suppose to "just work", but I'd really like to test it not only to see if it works, but also relative performance(as much can be guessed from an emulator)
There is no way, how to start you x86 PC in an "ARM mode", or launch Simulator in ARM mode. WinRT was designed to bridge the differences or these platforms so you don't need to worry about it and you can just develop. All I can think of right now is try to contact local Microsoft representative in your area - if they have any ARM tablet for testing, they might help you in this, but again if your app is not really flawed or computing power demanding, don't worry about the ARM platform :)
This now appears to be sorta possible (haven't tested yet) with the new App Ceritification Kit for WinRT, which appears to include ARM emulation.
EDIT: This isn't an emulator, it will only run on an ARM WinRT device. I guess there is no ARM emulator, despite that page mentioning ARM and emulation
Looks like available Pascal compilers can only produce binaries for ARM on Linux. Is there established version of compiler/bundle for just bare ARM cpu with zero extra software preinstalled ?
To clarify, I am looking for high quality, compact tool (alternative to commercial C, open source C) for kernel-less, plain embedded CPU with all software in one plain ROM ? IDE with debugging capabilities is nice to have, but not necessary. Dubugger could actually be some different 3rd party generic IDE. I hope that compilers can dump the debug/symbols info in some standard form.
Thank you
Free Pascal Compiler supports ARM without any OS. They call it TARGET EMBEDDED.
For ARM Linux take a look at this and this.
There is also Lazarus CT edition cross compiler which seams to target sysless ARM too.
UPDATE 1: mikroElektronika has also recently made Pascal compiler for ARM.
UPDATE 2: Ultibo framework for bare metal Raspberry Pi programming looks outstanding.
Short of buying a SPARC processor, what emulators are there? Thanks.
Pickup a second hand Power Mac G5 and you can run a fairly recent version of a mainstream OS (ie. OS X 10.5.8) and a modern development environment (Xcode 3.1.4).
You get a pretty fast, modern RISC machine running an OS that is still highly used (for the time being, I admit.)
You could also install Linux onto it if that would be better for your needs.
Probably a lot easier to find and cheaper than a SPARC machine.
You could also install the SPIM emulator for MIPS
On revisiting this, it's worth noting that nearly all modern smartphones run on ARM processors, which is short for 'Acorn RISC Machine'. So, an easy answer is 'Android Studio' or anything else targeting phone applications.
Similarly, there's a plethora of simple development boards available inexpensively, such as the BeagleBone Black and the Raspberry Pi, that also carry ARM processors.
I've noticed that all betas for Dropbox are released simultaneously for Windows, Mac and Linux. How do they do that? Anyone knows which platform they're using? I'm aware that there are many native -very impressive, actually- functions in each of the platform clients, but they seem to release critical bug fixes efortlessly for all platforms.
So any idea of which GUI platform they're using?
The Linux version includes files such as wx._windows_.so, libwx_gtk2*.so, etc. (I haven't checked the others), so I suspect Dropbox uses wxWidgets.
Qt is a popular cross-platform application and GUI framework with native look-and-feel.
I don't know what Dropbox uses for all its supported platforms, but it looks like its linux client uses at least Gtk: Dropbox linux System Requirements.