System requirements

This page lists the platforms that Russet supports and the tools and permissions that it needs to build, install, and run.

Supported platforms

Russet builds and runs on the following platforms:

Platform	Architecture	Target
macOS	Apple silicon	`aarch64-apple-darwin`
macOS	Intel	`x86_64-apple-darwin`
Linux	x86-64	`x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu`
Windows	x86-64	`x86_64-pc-windows-msvc`

Continuous integration builds and tests Russet on the GitHub-hosted runner images macos-15, macos-15-intel, ubuntu-24.04, and windows-2025. These images are the tested baselines, not minimum supported versions. Russet makes no compatibility promise for operating system versions outside that matrix.

Some processors work only on the platform whose tools they use. For example, mounting disk images, building packages, and verifying code signatures work only on macOS. For details, see Platform support.

Build tools

Russet doesn’t have a published release yet, so you build it from source. To build it, you need the following tools:

Git, to clone the Russet repository.
Rust, the current stable release. To install it, use rustup, as the Rust installation page describes.
A C compiler and linker, because Rust uses the system linker, and one of Russet’s dependencies includes C code:
- macOS: the Xcode Command Line Tools. To install them, run xcode-select --install.
- Linux: a C compiler, such as gcc. On Debian and Ubuntu, install the build-essential package.
- Windows: the Microsoft C++ Build Tools. The Rust installer offers to install them.

Required tools

Russet doesn’t bundle or use Python. It runs native system tools for some operations:

curl: Russet uses curl for downloads, GitHub API requests, and russet search. macOS and Windows include curl. On Linux, install curl from your distribution’s package manager.
Git: russet repo-add and russet repo-update clone and update recipe repositories with Git. Trust information also records Git details when Git is available. Install Git on every platform where you manage recipe repositories.
macOS system tools: on macOS, Russet uses tools that ship with the operating system, such as hdiutil, pkgbuild, installer, pkgutil, codesign, and ditto. You don’t need to install them.
Windows tools for specific processors: ChocolateyPackager needs the Chocolatey command choco.exe, and SignToolVerifier needs signtool.exe from the Windows SDK. Other processors don’t need them.

Permissions

The installers change system locations, so they need administrator access:

macOS and Linux: run install.sh with sudo. A system installation requires the root user.
Windows: run install.ps1 from an elevated PowerShell session when the destination folder needs administrator access, such as a folder under C:\Program Files.

You don’t need administrator access to run recipes. On macOS, privileged helper services build packages and install software for recipes that need them. For details, see How Russet works.

Disk space

Russet stores downloads and build products in its cache, which is ~/Library/Russet/Cache by default. Make sure that the cache’s volume has room for the software that your recipes download. To change the location, see Preferences.