Chapter 16: Deploying Code

One of the major benefits of Crystal is that its binaries can be statically linked. This means that all of the runtime dependencies of the program are included within the binary itself. If the binary was dynamically linked instead, the user would be required to have those dependencies installed to use the program. Similarly, since it compiles to a single binary, distributing it is much simpler since the source code does not need to be included.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following topics:

• Versioning your shard
• Creating production binaries
• Distributing your binary

By the end of this chapter, you will have a portable, performant binary that can be distributed to the end users of your application.