Development environment

The original application uses GNU Compiler Collection ( GCC ) so you want to create a development environment with this compiler and with the same version (when possible). To migrate the application to aarch64, you can use the same x86_64 machine you used to run the application. You can use an aarch64 container for our development environment which allows you to compile and run the ported application on the x86_64 machine.

See Docker Engine for instructions how to install Docker in your Linux environment.

GCC container

Use a text editor to create a file named Dockerfile with the following content:

    

        
        
            FROM ubuntu:22.04
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y install vim wget sudo git tar build-essential libopencv-dev cmake
RUN apt-get clean

ENV USER=ubuntu
RUN useradd --create-home -s /bin/bash -m $USER && echo "$USER:ubuntu" | chpasswd && adduser $USER sudo
RUN echo '%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

WORKDIR /home/ubuntu
USER ubuntu
        
    

This defines the GCC development environment.

Cross-platform build

The cross-platform build using buildx enables you to build an aarch64 container on an x86_64 machine. Once built, the cross-platform built container can be run on that same x86_64 machine using QEMU behind the scenes, quite convenient!

To build the container, run the following command:

    

        
        
            docker buildx build --platform linux/aarch64 -t sobel_gcc_example .
        
    

Run the container

Finally, run the aarch64 container on the x86_64 machine. Because the application will open a few X windows to display the image results, you need to enable graphical display when launching the container.

Run the commands below:

    

        
        
            xhost +local:*
docker run -it --rm --platform linux/aarch64 --net=host -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY -v /tmp/.X11-unix/:/tmp/.X11-unix/ -v $HOME/.Xauthority:/home/ubuntu/.Xauthority sobel_gcc_example /bin/bash
        
    

Now that you have the development environment running, you can port the Sobel filter application.