OS & Platform Support

Supported targets

Platform	Architecture	Minimum OS	glibc
Linux	x86_64	Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04	2.31+
Linux	aarch64	Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04	2.31+
macOS	x86_64 (Intel)	macOS 12 Monterey	—
macOS	arm64 (Apple Silicon)	macOS 12 Monterey	—
Windows	—	Not yet supported	—

Windows support is planned. Follow the changelog for updates.

glibc vs musl

Pure binaries on Linux are dynamically linked against glibc. They do not run natively on Alpine Linux (musl libc).

Workaround for Alpine: Install gcompat (glibc compatibility layer):

apk add gcompat

Or use libc6-compat:

apk add libc6-compat

After installing the compatibility package, Pure binaries run without modification.

Alternatively, compile and run your binary in a Debian or Ubuntu container for full compatibility without a shim layer.

Binary size

Workload	Release mode	Debug mode
Hello world	~2 MB	~5 MB
HTTP server	~4–6 MB	~10–15 MB
CLI with multiple dependencies	~10–20 MB	~25–45 MB

Debug mode binaries are larger because they include additional diagnostics and are not optimized. Use --release for production builds.

Stripping the binary reduces size further (typically 20–40% on Linux):

strip ./myapp

macOS binaries are stripped by default. Use dsymutil to extract debug symbols separately if needed.

Cold start

Pure binaries start fast because there is no module resolution, cache warm-up, or JIT compilation at startup. Typical cold start times:

Workload	Approximate cold start
Hello world	< 5 ms
HTTP server (first request)	< 20 ms
CLI with heavy initialization	30–100 ms

These are wall-clock measurements on commodity hardware. Actual times depend on binary size, filesystem speed, and system load.

Signals

Standard POSIX signals work: SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGHUP, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2. Register handlers via process.on('SIGTERM', ...) as you would in Node.

File descriptors and resource limits

The binary inherits ulimit settings from the parent process. The default open file descriptor limit (1024 on most Linux systems) applies. Use ulimit -n <value> or adjust /etc/security/limits.conf if your program opens many connections.

Cross-compilation

Cross-compilation (building a Linux binary from macOS, or aarch64 from x64) is not currently supported. To produce a binary for a specific platform, run pure build on that platform. Cloud-based cross-compilation is on the roadmap.