[josevalim]

Currently releases require the OS and architecture to match. However, Erlang/OTP does support cross compilation, so at least a possibility is there, it needs to be further explored: http://erlang.org/doc/installation_guide/INSTALL-CROSS.html

The other concern is packages with NIFs (native code) and they would need to be changed if they don't support cross-compilation yet.

I believe Nerves, which is an Elixir framework for embedded, does a good amount of cross compilation too but they have a more controlled environment.

[pmarreck]

How does `mix release` handle NIFs currently? Same architecture is assumed?

[di4na]

Yes, basically it does not. It is up to the NIF packager to package a working way to handle that.