Golang makes statically linked binaries. (Well, until you use cgo.)

By default, Crystal generates dynamically linked binaries. You absolutely do not need Crystal to run them. But you do need:

- Boehm GC (libgc-threaded)

- libevent

- PCRE if the program uses regexps

- libyaml if the program uses yaml

- OpenSSL if the program uses crypto/TLS (?)

Here's an example ldd output:

    /usr/local/bin/shards:
            libyaml-0.so.2 => /usr/local/lib/libyaml-0.so.2 (0x8c0bb1e000)
            libpcre.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libpcre.so.1 (0x8c0bd3c000)
            libm.so.5 => /lib/libm.so.5 (0x8c0bfb8000)
            libgc-threaded.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libgc-threaded.so.1 (0x8c0c1e6000)
            libthr.so.3 => /lib/libthr.so.3 (0x8c0c444000)
            libevent-2.1.so.6 => /usr/local/lib/libevent-2.1.so.6 (0x8c0c66c000)
            libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x8c0c8c3000)
            libc.so.7 => /lib/libc.so.7 (0x8c0cad2000)
            libdl.so.1 => /usr/lib/libdl.so.1 (0x8c0ce8f000)
            libcrypto.so.42 => /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.so (0x8c0d091000)

You can try `crystal build --static` though :)

Thanks for explaining! In other threads, I've seen people refer to them as fat binaries, but yes, I've also seen them referred to as statically linked binaries.