Hi,

While going over the list of packages that can't be build on arm64 [1],
I noticed crystal as it Build-Depends on itself. I checked and then saw
that the Architecture field of the arch specific binary was set to amd64
and it seems that this has been the case since the initial packaging for
Debian. The Release Team RC policy [2] states: "Packages must be
supported on as many architectures as is reasonably possible.", and
upstream supports much more architectures, so I was wondering if this
was just a small mistake. In general in Debian it's preferred [4] to
just say "Architecture: any", even if a package can't be build
everywhere (e.g. due to missing Build-Depends). I'm not requesting you
to do the bootstrapping yourself (although I'm encouraging you to try),
but not claiming amd64 only support is relevant to Debian.

Paul

[1] https://qa.debian.org/dose/debcheck/src_testing_main/latest/arm64.html
[2] https://release.debian.org/testing/rc_policy.txt
[3]
https://crystal-lang.org/reference/1.19/syntax_and_semantics/platform_support.html
[4]
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.en.html#being-kind-to-porters

Hi,

Initially, crystal only supported amd64.

If I recall correctly, arm was introduced some time ago. And as I much as I
now, it does not support more archs (let me take a look, anyway).

So, If I'm not wrong, should be amd64 and arm, not any, I guess.

Anyway, again, let me take a look.



El jue, 19 mar 2026, 10:05, Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> escribió:

Hi,

Initially, crystal only supported amd64.

If I recall correctly, arm was introduced some time ago. And as I much as I
now, it does not support more archs (let me take a look, anyway).

So, If I'm not wrong, should be amd64 and arm, not any, I guess.

Anyway, again, let me take a look.



El jue, 19 mar 2026, 10:05, Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> escribió:

Hi,


In Debian the custom is to try and only if it really fails, don't
support an architecture. As crystal has a Build-Depends on crystal,
somebody needs to bootstrap the architecture first (not necessarily
you). As long as that hasn't been done, you'll only see the
architectures where the bootstrap happened. See for example src:fpc [1],
which is also self-hosting. The Architecture is set to any, but the
packages aren't available on half the Debian official and port
architectures, and that's fine.

Paul

[1] https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=fpc

Hi,


In Debian the custom is to try and only if it really fails, don't
support an architecture. As crystal has a Build-Depends on crystal,
somebody needs to bootstrap the architecture first (not necessarily
you). As long as that hasn't been done, you'll only see the
architectures where the bootstrap happened. See for example src:fpc [1],
which is also self-hosting. The Architecture is set to any, but the
packages aren't available on half the Debian official and port
architectures, and that's fine.

Paul

[1] https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=fpc