Installation with ADE for arm64 Systems

Table of Contents

• Goals
• Native arm64 System
  • Prerequisites
  • Launch ADE arm64 Docker
• Non-native arm64 System
  • Prerequisites
  • Configuring Docker for Multi-architecture Emulation
  • Launching ADE

Goals

This article demonstrates how to launch AutowareAuto using ADE for arm64 systems and those wishing to develop using arm64. This document will cover both native and non-native systems using ADE.

Native arm64 System

The following section describes the process required to launch the ade environment on an arm64 based system.

Prerequisites

Ensure that ADE has been installed and the .adehome file has been created. To complete this, follow the instructions in Install ADE then subsequently Setup ADE home and project checkout.

Launch ADE arm64 Docker

Enter the development directory and launch the ADE docker:

$ cd ~/adehome/AutowareAuto
$ ade --rc .aderc-arm64 start --update --enter

Non-native arm64 System

The following section describes the process to run multi-architecture systems using Docker, binfmt, and qemu.

Prerequisites

Before alternative architectures can be run on a system, ensure that one can run ADE and AutowareAuto on the native architecture. Those with amd64 systems should follow the instructions in Installation with ADE and ensure all dependencies are properly installed. The following will assume that all ADE and AutowareAuto dependencies have been installed.

Note

The emulation library used for this section is currently only compatible with x86_64. Check your system architecture using the following command:

$ uname -m

To check the systems which Docker is compatible with run the following command:

$ docker buildx ls

The output the following should look like this:

$ docker buildx ls
NAME/NODE DRIVER/ENDPOINT STATUS  PLATFORMS
default * docker
  default default         running linux/amd64, linux/386  

To check that your system is currently incompatible with arm64 systems is by running:

$ docker run --rm -t arm64v8/ubuntu uname -m

The output of this should error and indicate that libraries were not found.

Configuring Docker for Multi-architecture Emulation

First, install emulation and binary support libraries that will allow Docker to run multiple architectures. The libraries qemu and qemu-user-static provide emulation support allowing Docker to interpret alternative architectures on an x86_64 environment. The kernel module binfmt-support allows for the registry and invocation of binary interpreters at the system administrator level.

$ sudo apt-get install qemu binfmt-support qemu-user-static

Finally, invoke the qemu-user-static docker image to install and link the interpreters and architectures for various architectures.

$ docker run --rm --privileged multiarch/qemu-user-static --reset -p yes

To check that the installation and registry was successful, run the following command and ensure that it exits cleanly:

$ docker run --rm -t arm64v8/ubuntu uname -m
...
aarch64

Additional checks include running the buildx option with Docker. This should output a larger variety of build types available to Docker.

Note

There will be an initial warning that the architecture of the image Docker is trying to bring up is different to the architecture of the system.

WARNING: The requested image's platform (linux/arm64) does not match the detected host platform (linux/amd64) and no specific platform was requested

Launching ADE

Now that the set-up is complete, the arm64 ADE image can be launched with no issues

$ ade --rc .aderc-arm64 start --update --enter

Warning

Launching ADE in the non-native environment leads to incredibly reduced performance as compared to a native configuration due to the binary translation that is happening within Docker; approximately 5x that of a native system.