Cross-Platform Build Support#

LanceDB ships prebuilt binaries for multiple OS/architecture combinations. The primary complexity is Windows ARM64 (aarch64-pc-windows-msvc), which required several dedicated CI changes across the Rust, Node.js, and Python build pipelines.

Supported Platforms#

The Node.js SDK (@lancedb/lancedb) provides prebuilt binaries for 1:

Users on any other platform must build from source.

Rust CI#

The Rust workflow at .github/workflows/rust.yml runs a matrix build covering both Windows targets 2:

• x86_64-pc-windows-msvc on windows-2022
• aarch64-pc-windows-msvc on windows-11-arm (GitHub's free standard ARM64 runner)

Both legs run cargo build and cargo test, so ARM64 tests execute natively rather than being skipped. A comment in the workflow notes that earlier implementations cross-compiled and skipped the test step; switching to a native windows-11-arm runner resolved that 3.

Compiler flags#

.cargo/config.toml sets static CRT linking for the ARM64 Windows target:

[target.aarch64-pc-windows-msvc]
rustflags = ["-Ctarget-feature=+crt-static"]

The Rust dev-dependencies in rust/lancedb/Cargo.toml gate the pprof profiling dep behind cfg(unix) to avoid pulling it in on Windows at all 4.

Cross-Compilation Infrastructure (Linux → Windows ARM64)#

Before native windows-11-arm runners were available, builds used Alpine-based cross-compilation. The key artifact of that work is ci/sysroot-aarch64-pc-windows-msvc.sh, which:

• Downloads Windows SDK UCRT headers/libs and MSVC runtime artifacts 5
• Normalizes include/lib paths (lowercases filenames and #include directives) for Linux filesystem compatibility 5
• Installs headers under /usr/aarch64-pc-windows-msvc/usr/include and libraries under /usr/lib 5
• Explicitly links arm64rt.lib to resolve _Interlocked intrinsic linker errors (MSVC Developer Community #1544787) 5

A companion ci/sysroot-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.sh provides the same scaffolding for x86_64 Windows cross-builds 5.

The Alpine-based cross-compile job (added in PR #2081) also pinned crunchy = "=0.2.2" as a workaround for a compile break in upstream 6, and set ARM64-specific CPU feature flags (+neon,+fp16,+fhm,+dotprod) in RUSTFLAGS 6.

Python Wheels#

The PyPI publish workflow at .github/workflows/pypi-publish.yml currently releases Windows x86_64 wheels only 7. The windows job uses rust-lld in place of the single-threaded link.exe for faster builds 8:

CARGO_TARGET_X86_64_PC_WINDOWS_MSVC_LINKER: rust-lld

PR #3676 added a Windows ARM64 Python wheel CI job on windows-11-arm. The wheel builds and passes 797 Python + 709 Rust tests, but is not yet published to PyPI (artifact prefix unpublished-) because key runtime dependencies — pyarrow, pylance, datafusion, polars — lack win_arm64 wheels on PyPI 9.

Node.js Packaging#

PR #1770 added the @lancedb/vectordb-win32-arm64-msvc npm package (in nodejs/npm/win32-arm64-msvc/) and wired it into node/package.json. The build scripts ci/build_windows_artifacts.ps1 and ci/build_windows_artifacts_nodejs.ps1 were updated accordingly 10.

An earlier bug where target-triple arguments were silently dropped (npm run pack-build -t $TARGET vs the correct npm run pack-build -- -t $TARGET) was fixed in PR #1890.

Key Files & References#

History#