Workaround for building V on Windows ARM

If you are trying to build V on a Windows ARM device and encounter erros when running make.bat, such as C compilation errors due to missing libraries, follow the steps below to resolve the issue.

1. Install Visual Studio C++ Tools

To address the missing libraries, you will need to install the Visual Studio C++ build tools and the cl compiler. You can download the Visual Studio Build Tools from here

Ensure that you install Visual Studio with the Desktop development with C++ package. This will include the necessary libraries and the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) compiler.

2. Build V with MSVC

After installing the required tools, you can attempt to build V using the MSVC toolchain:

make.bat -msvc

While the full build process may still fail due to incomplete support for ARM chips, this step will successfully generate a v.exe executable.

3. Testing the V Compiler

Once the v.exe executable is created, you can test the V compiler by running the following commands:

Compiling a V program:

v -cc msvc examples/hello_world.v

Running a V program:

v -cc msvc run examples/hello_world.v

If successful, you should see the output Hello, World! in the console.

4. Setting the Environment Variable

To avoid specifying the -cc msvc flag each time you compile a V program, you can set the VFLAGS environment variable to ensure that the MSVC compiler is used by default. Follow this guide and set the VFLAGS environment variable to -cc msvc.

v run examples/hello_world.v