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Installing Platform Specific Packages

At times, you may need to install a package or library that is only available on a specific platform. For example, you may want to install a package that is only available on Linux, while still using the same Devbox configuration on your Mac.

Devbox allows you to specify which platforms a package should be installed on using the --platform and --exclude-platform flags. When a package is added using these flags, it will be added to your devbox.json, but will only be installed when you run Devbox on a matching platform.

info

Specifying platforms for packages will alter your devbox.json in a way that is only compatible with Devbox 0.5.12 and newer.

If you encounter errors trying to run a Devbox project with platform-specific packages, you may need to run devbox version update

Installing Platform Specific Packages​

To avoid build or installation errors, you can tell Devbox to only install a package on specific platforms using the --platform flag when you run devbox add.

For example, to install the busybox package only on Linux platforms, you can run:

devbox add busybox --platform x86_64-linux,aarch64-linux

This will add busybox to your devbox.json, but will only install it when use devbox on a Linux machine. The packages section in your config will look like the following

{
    "packages": {
        "busybox": {
            "version": "latest",
            "platforms": ["x86_64-linux", "aarch64-linux"]
        }
    }
}

Excluding a Package from Specific Platforms​

You can also tell Devbox to exclude a package from a specific platform using the --exclude-platform flag. For example, to avoid installing ripgrep on an ARM-based Mac, you can run:

devbox add ripgrep --exclude-platform aarch64-darwin

This will add ripgrep to your devbox.json, but will not install it when use devbox on an ARM-based Mac. The packages section in your config will look like the following:

{
    "packages": {
        "ripgrep": {
            "version": "latest",
            "excluded_platforms": ["aarch64-darwin"]
        }
    }
}

Supported Platforms​

Valid Platforms include:

  • aarch64-darwin
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • x86_64-linux

The platforms below are also supported, but will build packages from source

  • i686-linux
  • armv7l-linux