ARM64 Raspberry Pi: install script downloads binary requiring GLIBC_2.39 (Debian Bookworm incompatible)

Summary

When installing RTK on a Raspberry Pi 4 (ARM64) running Debian Bookworm using the official install script, the downloaded binary fails to run due to a GLIBC version mismatch.

The installation script reports success, but the binary cannot execute on a standard Debian Bookworm system.

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Environment

Hardware: Raspberry Pi 4

Architecture

uname -m

Output:

aarch64

OS

Debian GNU/Linux 12 (Bookworm)

Kernel

uname -a

Example:

Linux 6.12.62+rpt-rpi-v8

GLIBC version

ldd --version

Output:

glibc 2.36
Installation method

Official install script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rtk-ai/rtk/refs/heads/master/install.sh | sh

Script output:

[INFO] Installing rtk...
[INFO] Detected: linux aarch64
[INFO] Target: aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
[INFO] Version: v0.29.0
[INFO] Successfully installed rtk to ~/.local/bin/rtk
Actual behaviour

Running the binary produces:

rtk: /lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.39' not found

This prevents RTK from running on Debian Bookworm / Raspberry Pi OS.

Expected behaviour

The installed binary should run on a typical ARM64 Linux environment such as:

Debian Bookworm

Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit

Other ARM64 Linux distributions using glibc 2.36

Workaround

Compiling RTK locally works correctly:

cargo install --git https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk

Compilation time on Raspberry Pi 4 is approximately:

8–12 minutes

After compilation:

rtk --version
rtk gain

Both commands work as expected.

Possible improvements

One of the following could make installation smoother for ARM users:

Provide an ARM64 binary compiled against an older glibc compatible with Debian Bookworm

Provide a static musl build

Make the install script detect incompatible glibc and fall back to cargo install

Additional context

RTK works very well once compiled on ARM64.

In my case it is used with Claude Code hooks to compress shell outputs before sending them to an LLM, which is particularly useful on lightweight ARM nodes running automation agents.

Thank you

Thanks for building RTK — the hook-based approach works very well in practice.