Cross

#macOS

Tell Rustup to download the standard library for Linux.

rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

macOS doesn’t come with a linker that understands Linux binaries. Use musl-cross:

brew install messense/macos-cross-toolchains/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

You need to tell Cargo to use that specific linker when building for Linux.

Verify the binary name: Run ls /opt/homebrew/bin | grep musl to see the exact filename.

It is usually x86_64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc.

Create or edit .cargo/config.toml in your project folder:

[target.x86_64-unknown-linux-musl]
linker = "x86_64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc"

cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl --release

If your project uses OpenSSL, cross-compiling gets messy because OpenSSL tries to find local C headers. To fix this, add the vendored feature to your Cargo.toml: Ini, TOML

openssl = { version = "0.10", features = ["vendored"] }

This forces Rust to compile its own version of OpenSSL instead of looking for a Linux version on your Mac.