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 on Windows 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.

The .zip file is the portable package and can be extracted into any location. To use Crystal from any location, the installation directory should be manually added to the PATH environment variable.

The .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.

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 Crystal via the GUI installer automatically removes the previous installation.

Scoop

A community bucket for the Scoop package manager is also available. Start by installing git (if you don’t already have it available) and adding the Crystal repository:

scoop install git
scoop bucket add crystal-preview https://github.com/neatorobito/scoop-crystal

If you don’t yet have the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt available, run this command:

scoop install vs_2022_cpp_build_tools

Finally:

scoop install crystal

When a new Crystal version is released you can upgrade your system using:

scoop update
scoop update crystal

Please see the neatorobito/scoop-crystal repo for more information and support.