Windows (Preview)

Crystal on Windows is currently distributed as both portable and installer preview packages. They are available on the GitHub releases page. Be aware that Crystal on Windows is not yet complete.

Install

Crystal can use either Microsoft Visual C++ or MinGW-w64 as the toolchain.

Microsoft Visual C++ Toolchain

The MSVC variant of Crystal requires the following prerequisites:

Microsoft Visual Studio build tools, which may be downloaded at one of the following locations:
- https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vs_BuildTools.exe
- https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/ (also includes the Visual Studio IDE)
Either the “Desktop development with C++” workload or the “MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools” components should be selected.
Windows 10 SDK, which is available as a component from the above installers.
Developer mode is enabled in Windows Settings.

Next download a Crystal release file with -msvc- in its name (see above).

The *-msvc-unsupported.zip file is the portable package and can be extracted into any location. To use Crystal from that location, either call its crystal.exe directly, or the installation directory can be manually added to the PATH environment variable.

The *-msvc-unsupported.exe file is the GUI installer; simply follow the instructions in the installation wizard. The GUI installer generates a warning if it detects that the above prerequisites aren’t met. By default it adds crystal to the PATH environment variable.

MinGW-w64 Toolchain

It is highly recommended to use the MinGW-w64 variant of Crystal inside an MSYS2 shell, which sets up a toolchain automatically and provides a package manager. See Install on MSYS2 for instructions.

Using Crystal without MSYS2 is also possible. The *-gnu-unsupported.zip file is a portable package and can be extracted into any location. A separate, standalone toolchain such as WinLibs GCC is required. This package also does not come with the development libraries for Crystal’s third-party dependencies, so you are responsible for preparing them manually.

Upgrade

Multiple portable packages can be installed side-by-side. They do not upgrade themselves, so any old versions need to be removed manually. Do not simply extract a new portable package over an old one, as this will fail to remove files that are deleted in a version upgrade.

Installing MSVC Crystal via the GUI installer automatically removes the previous installation.