Building whisper backend on Windows ARM

[tritonexperiment]

Not ruling out this is a setup issue with my laptop, not a programmer. This is a Windows Surface Laptop - Snapdragon ARM, had issues trying to get things to build before due to everyone expecting an X64 machine. I've tried launching X64 or X86 VS Build Environments, but I think somewhere in your build it still just queries the device architecture so I cannot override.

Think this is the error but the whole output is below

Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid combination of Configuration and Platform for this project. Configuration='Debug' Platform='ARM64'. You may be seeing this message because you are trying to build a project without a solution file, and have specified a non-default Configuration or Platform that doesn't exist for this project. [C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend\whisper.cpp\build\CMakeFiles\3.31.6\VCTargetsPath.vcxproj]

When trying to build the backend receive this error.

PS C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend> .\build_whisper.cmd
=== Starting Whisper.cpp Build Process ===

Updating git submodules...
Checking for whisper.cpp directory...
Changing to whisper.cpp directory...
Checking for whisper.cpp repository...
"List all files in the whisper.cpp examples directory"
CMakeLists.txt
httplib.h
public
README.md
server.cpp
"Copying the all the server files from ../whisper-custom/server to examples/server"
..\whisper-custom\server\CMakeLists.txt
..\whisper-custom\server\httplib.h
..\whisper-custom\server\README.md
..\whisper-custom\server\server.cpp
..\whisper-custom\server\public\index.html
5 File(s) copied
Checking for server directory...
Checking for server source files...
Building whisper.cpp server...
Running CMake...
CMake Deprecation Warning at CMakeLists.txt:1 (cmake_minimum_required):
Compatibility with CMake < 3.10 will be removed from a future version of
CMake.

Update the VERSION argument value. Or, use the ... syntax
to tell CMake that the project requires at least but has been updated
to work with policies introduced by or earlier.

-- Selecting Windows SDK version 10.0.22621.0 to target Windows 10.0.26100.
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:2 (project):
Failed to run MSBuild command:

C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/BuildTools/MSBuild/Current/Bin/arm64/MSBuild.exe

to get the value of VCTargetsPath:

MSBuild version 17.11.9+a69bbaaf5 for .NET Framework
Build started 17/03/2025 11:52:25 AM.

Project "C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend\whisper.cpp\build\CMakeFiles\3.31.6\VCTargetsPath.vcxproj" on node 1 (default targets).
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin\arm64\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(844,5): error : The BaseOutputPath/OutputPath property is not set for project 'VCTargetsPath.vcxproj'.  Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid combination of Configuration and Platform for this project.  Configuration='Debug'  Platform='ARM64'.  You may be seeing this message because you are trying to build a project without a solution file, and have specified a non-default Configuration or Platform that doesn't exist for this project. [C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend\whisper.cpp\build\CMakeFiles\3.31.6\VCTargetsPath.vcxproj]
Done Building Project "C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend\whisper.cpp\build\CMakeFiles\3.31.6\VCTargetsPath.vcxproj" (default targets) -- FAILED.

Build FAILED.

"C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend\whisper.cpp\build\CMakeFiles\3.31.6\VCTargetsPath.vcxproj" (default target) (1) ->
(_CheckForInvalidConfigurationAndPlatform target) ->
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin\arm64\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(844,5): error : The BaseOutputPath/OutputPath property is not set for project 'VCTargetsPath.vcxproj'.  Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid combination of Configuration and Platform for this project.  Configuration='Debug'  Platform='ARM64'.  You may be seeing this message because you are trying to build a project without a solution file, and have specified a non-default Configuration or Platform that doesn't exist for this project. [C:\Users\trito\meeting-minutes\backend\whisper.cpp\build\CMakeFiles\3.31.6\VCTargetsPath.vcxproj]

    0 Warning(s)
    1 Error(s)

Time Elapsed 00:00:00.18

Exit code: 1

-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
Failed to run CMake

[sujithatzackriya]

Hello @tritonexperiment

The error is due to the fact that you're trying to build this on a device with Arm processor. The error is from whisper.cpp build step.

Whisper.cpp issue for this is still open and is not addressed - ggml-org/whisper.cpp#2132