Microsoft Releases SDK and Tools for Creating 64-bit ARM Apps
With the official release of Microsoft's Visual Studio 15.9, developers now have the officially supported SDK and tools for creating 64-bit ARM (ARM64) apps.
In addition, Microsoft said that the Microsoft Store is now officially accepting submissions for apps built for the ARM64 architecture.
This holiday season, Lenovo and Samsung are offering new Windows 10 on ARM devices featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor. These second-generation ARM64 devices provide even more computing power for developers to tap into while continuing to deliver the beyond-all-day battery life. Like the first-generation ARM64 devices, they are also thin, light, fast, and designed with instant-on 4G LTE connectivity in mind, while able to run the wide ecosystem of Windows applications thanks to an x86 emulation layer.
Developers can use Visual Studio 15.9 today to recompile apps – both UWP and C++ Win32 – to run natively on Windows 10 on ARM devices.
Microsoft's Store is now accepting ARM64 UWP apps, both C++ and .NET Native. Developers can also use the Desktop Bridge to wrap ARM64 binaries into a package that can be submitted to the Store. In addition, developers can also host dedicated ARM64 versions of their Win32 apps on their website or integrate ARM64 into existing multi-architecture installers.