[DEPRECATED: Official Available] Installing Native Aarch64 VSCode on Windows on Arm Devices

Code_OSS_Aarcha64.md

This guide is a summation of current situation as of Apr. 26, 2020, on how to build and use native Aarch64 (ARM64) Visual Studio Code on devices like Surface Pro X.

References

• This Issue on Official Repo;
• The MS Contribution Guidle;
• This Pull Request;
• And This Build Sample.

Steps to Follow

• NOTICE 1: I strongly recommend that you do the build procedures on an x86 machine, as VS2019 is not running natively on Aarch64.
• NOTICE 2: Situation here is highly likely to change as there's likely to be an official Aarcha64 build by this autumn.

On a Windows Machine where You wish to Build VSCode (x86 or ARM64)

• Install Visual Studio 2019;
• Install Git, NodeJS 12.x and Yarn;
• Run npm install --global windows-build-tools --vs2019 in admin console. Note it's 2019 now.
  • Installing Python yourself and setting npm config set msvs_version 2019 seems an effective alternative for this step.
• Clone the master repository git clone --branch master https://github.com/microsoft/vscode;
• In repository root, run the build yarn install --force;
• On sight of error like LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'C:\\Users\\<Your Name>\\AppData\\Local\\node-gyp\\Cache\\12.4.0\\arm64\\node.lib', download the unofficial build and put node.lib under directory where error is reported;
• yarn run gulp vscode-win32-arm64 to build VSCode - OSS binary;
• yarn run gulp vscode-win32-arm64-archive to pack it up.
  • If you find some Node.js modules missing at the above 2 steps, try to install with yarn add <Module Name> --no-save.

If all procedures above are followed, you should get a package functional under Aarch64 under .build\win32-arm64\archive.