macOS "building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64"

[rajrana22]

I was recently working on an erasure coding project that was based on this ISA-L library. Everything was going fine, and I was just debugging for a while and then I left the project for about one day. Then the next day when I got back to it I ran into the error listed below. I hadn't made any changes to the code or to my Mac that I know of between the time I was off.

So I tried to start simple so I cloned the original ISA-L library again and tried to build again. Then, when I ran make I got the same errors again.

I'm running on macOS Monterey 12.5 with the M1 Apple chip.

Here is the full display of the error message:

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/make --no-print-directory all-am
  CCLD     libisal.la
ld: warning: -undefined dynamic_lookup is incompatible with dyld share cache
ld: warning: ignoring file raid/.libs/raid_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file erasure_code/.libs/ec_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file crc/.libs/crc_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/hufftables_c.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file crc/.libs/crc64_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/igzip.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/adler32_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/encode_df.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/igzip_icf_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/flatten_ll.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/igzip_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/igzip_icf_body.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/huff_codes.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file mem/.libs/mem_zero_detect_base.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: warning: ignoring file igzip/.libs/igzip_inflate.o, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for unknown-arm64
ld: -undefined dynamic_lookup cannot be used to find '_ec_encode_data_base' in dylib in dyld shared cache for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
make[1]: *** [libisal.la] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

I have tried multiple solutions online, but none of them seem to work. Does anybody know how to fix this issue?

[gbtucker]

Hi @rajrana22,

It sounds like you built objects to one target arch (x86_64) and are trying to force link the library to another (arm64). I would suggest you do all testing with a single target first. Perhaps you did some override to force a cross macOS-x86_64 CFLAGS to the compiler but the corresponding args didn't get passed to the linker.

[rajrana22]

Thanks for the quick reply, @gbtucker. Unfortunately, I'm not very well-versed in compilers/architectures. Luckily, for the time being, I am working on a separate server that runs CentOS, and I am able to get my work done there for now. While there is no rush, I would still like to get back to working on my own MacBook. Do you know how/where I can check for something that might have messed with the compiler?

[gbtucker]

Could you report the steps you took to setup and build? On an x86_64 mac it used to be pretty simple. You can even use brew now to install isa-l on mac but the formula is only x86_64 for now.

[rajrana22]

I already had nasm installed, so I just used Autotools to build and install as mentioned in the README:

./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

[rhpvorderman]

I'm running on macOS Monterey 12.5 with the M1 Apple chip

So you are building for x86_64 on the M1 chip, which is arm64. The errors suggest that it tries to build for x86_64 but instead finds all these files that are compiled for arm64. The compiler selects the native arm64 architecture by default (which is reasonable). So I guess you could cross-compile to x86_64 by setting the correct compile flags?

I hadn't made any changes to the code or to my Mac that I know of between the time I was off.

That makes it very confusing. The Apple M1 chip shouldn't be able to succesfully compile ISA-L (the PR #164 is not merged yet), unless it is cross-compiling for x86_64. I have no clue why it would be able to compile before.

[rajrana22]

@rhpvorderman Thank you so much! Your reply got me thinking and I found a solution. The issue was indeed what you were talking about, and I noticed that while in my regular terminal the output of arch was arm64 (which is what I should want), the output of arch in the VScode terminal was i386.

The solution was to run the following command: env /usr/bin/arch -arm64 /bin/zsh --login.

However, I'm still having issues.

When I run make I get the following error:

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/make --no-print-directory all-am
  CC       erasure_code/aarch64/ec_aarch64_dispatcher.lo
In file included from erasure_code/aarch64/ec_aarch64_dispatcher.c:29:
./include/aarch64_multibinary.h:34:10: fatal error: 'asm/hwcap.h' file not found
#include <asm/hwcap.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.
make[1]: *** [erasure_code/aarch64/ec_aarch64_dispatcher.lo] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

This error seems identical to one referenced in issue 86, but I'm not sure if a solution was mentioned.

[rhpvorderman]

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with this project, I am just a user like you. Due to my work on python-isal I have experience compiling ISA-L on multiple platforms, but M1 macs are not one of them. I do not own the hardware so I cannot test on it. Take a look at #164. You might be able to get that branch working. If not, I am sure the contributors of that branch would appreciate the feedback.