Porting and Optimizing Arduino IDE for Windows on Arm

Project Difficulty

Challenging

Target Audience

Computer Science, Electronic Engineering or Computer Engineering.

Description

This project focuses on porting the Arduino IDE—an essential open-source platform for embedded development—to run natively and efficiently on Windows on Arm (WoA) platforms. In addition, the project tackles a key dependency, lzma-native, a compression library used by the IDE, which currently lacks support for Windows on Arm Previous attempts to build lzma-native on WoA failed due to architecture-specific compilation issues and native module bindings (node-gyp, liblzma, etc.).

Key Objectives:

• Successfully build and run the Arduino IDE on Windows on Arm.
• Patch or fork lzma-native to enable full compatibility on WoA.
• Benchmark IDE performance and memory usage on Arm64 vs. x64 emulation.
• Submit upstream patches and document issues to support long-term ecosystem health.

This project aligns strongly with Arm’s mission to expand native software compatibility on Arm-based Windows devices. It provides students with a deep dive into cross-platform development, native module compilation, and Arm architecture optimization, making it ideal for CV building, community contribution, and real-world system-level experience.

Estimated Project Duration

• Time: 10–12 weeks
• Team Size: 1–5 students

Hardware / Software Requirements

• Languages: JavaScript (Node.js), TypeScript, C++ (lzma-native)
• Tooling:
  • CMake, Ninja, Visual Studio with C++ Desktop Dev, UTM
  • Windows Terminal, PowerShell, WSL2 (optional for cross-compilation)
• Hardware: Access to a physical Windows on Arm device or a WoA Virtual Machine running through UTM
  • Linaro Windows on Arm Environments available to students
• Accounts:
  • GitHub for forks/PRs
  • Arduino developer forums

Resources

• Arduino IDE GitHub repo
• lzma-native GitHub repo
• Issue #132 – lzma-native Windows Arm64 build failure
• Arm’s official Learn on Arm platform
• Windows on Arm Environments – Linaro wiki
• Optional: Node.js native addon guides

Benefits / Prizes

• Standout projects could be internally referred for relevant positions at Arm! 📃
• If your submission is approved, you could receive a recognised badge that you can list on your CV and shared on LinkedIn. A great way to stand out from the crowd! 🎓
• It’s a great way to demonstrate your initiative and commitment to your field.
• It offers the opportunity to learn valuable skills that are highly relevant to a successful career at Arm! 🎉