Crystal Platform Support

The Crystal compiler runs on, and compiles to, a great number of platforms, though not all platforms are equally supported. Crystal’s support levels are organized into three tiers, each with a different set of guarantees.

Platforms are identified by their “target triple” which is the string to inform the compiler what kind of output should be produced. The columns below indicate whether the corresponding component works on the specified platform.

Tier 1

Tier 1 platforms can be thought of as “guaranteed to work”. Specifically they will each satisfy the following requirements:

• Official binary releases are provided for the platform.
• Automated testing is set up to run tests for the platform.
• Documentation for how to use and how to build the platform is available.

Only maintained operating system versions are fully supported. Obsolete versions are not guaranteed to work and drop into Tier 2.

Target	Description	Supported versions	Comment
aarch64-darwin	Aarch64 macOS (Apple Silicon)	11+ (testing only on 14)	tests builds
x86_64-darwin	x64 macOS (Intel)	11+ (testing only on 13; expected to work on 10.7+)	tests  builds
x86_64-linux-gnu	x64 Linux	kernel 4.14+, GNU libc 2.26+ (expected to work on kernel 2.6.18+)	tests  builds
x86_64-linux-musl	x64 Linux	kernel 4.14+, MUSL libc 1.2+ (expected to work on kernel 2.6.18+)	tests  builds

Tier 2

Tier 2 platforms can be thought of as “expected to work”.

The requirements for Tier 1 may be partially fulfilled, but are lacking in some way that prevents a solid gurantee. Details are described in the Comment column.

Target	Description	Supported versions	Comment
aarch64-linux-gnu	Aarch64 Linux	GNU libc 2.26+	tests builds
aarch64-linux-musl	Aarch64 Linux	MUSL libc 1.2+	tests  builds
arm-linux-gnueabihf	Aarch32 Linux (hardfloat)	GNU libc 2.26+	tests  builds
i386-linux-gnu	x86 Linux	kernel 4.14+, GNU libc 2.26+ (expected to work on kernel 2.6.18+)	tests  builds
i386-linux-musl	x86 Linux	kernel 4.14+, MUSL libc 1.2+ (expected to work on kernel 2.6.18+)	tests  builds
x86_64-openbsd	x64 OpenBSD	6+	tests  builds
x86_64-freebsd	x64 FreeBSD	12+	tests  builds

Tier 3

Tier 3 platforms can be thought of as “partially works”.

The Crystal codebase has support for these platforms, but there are some major limitations. Most typically, some parts of the standard library are not supported completely.

Target	Description	Supported versions	Comment
x86_64-windows-msvc	x64 Windows (MSVC)	7+	tests  builds
aarch64-windows-msvc	ARM64 Windows (MSVC)	11+	tests  builds
aarch64-linux-android	aarch64 Android	Bionic C runtime, API level 24+	tests  builds
x86_64-unknown-dragonfly	x64 DragonFlyBSD		tests  builds
x86_64-unknown-netbsd	x64 NetBSD		tests  builds
wasm32-unknown-wasi	WebAssembly (WASI libc)	Wasmtime 2+	tests
x86_64-solaris	Solaris/illumos		tests builds

Compiler support

The compiler can target these platforms but there is no support for the standard library (i.e. must compile with --prelude=empty).

Legend

• means automated tests or builds are not available
• means automated tests or builds are available
• means automated test are available, but the implementation is incomplete

Note

Big thanks go to the Rust team for putting together such a clear document on Rust’s platform support that we used as insipration for ours.