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As a developer, I have experienced major issues with installing languages, libraries and development tools from the command-line as Apple M1 has migrated over to using arm64 instead of x86_64 architecture.

In order to bridge the gap before all libraries and tools change over to arm64, and to avoid library incompatibilities between architectures, in many cases it may be easier for developers to just emulate x86_64 to perform their library installs.

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  • 2
    Note that Mojave was the last version to support i386 - The intel arcitecture now supported is is x86_64
    – mmmmmm
    Oct 12, 2021 at 20:20
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    It might also be easier for Apple Silicon to use Macports which has supported that since it was released. Which languages and libraries are not ARM?
    – mmmmmm
    Oct 12, 2021 at 20:21
  • yeah i386 is strange, more here for arch stackoverflow.com/a/12763379/740575, updated to be more clear it was for x86_64
    – sonjz
    Oct 13, 2021 at 2:12
  • hmm we had several m1s setup over the past quarter, found this was best solution as we use brew. dual brew and pyenv abandonment is where i stopped to take another look
    – sonjz
    Oct 13, 2021 at 2:27
  • What does " dual brew and pyenv abandonment" mean?
    – mmmmmm
    Oct 13, 2021 at 9:55

1 Answer 1

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After installing Rosetta:

softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

It seems to be a good idea to run your entire Terminal in Rosetta:

  • Go to Finder > Applications and find your Terminal (this can also be other terminal app, like iTerm in my case)
  • Right-Click the App and Duplicate it and rename it "Terminal x86_64"
  • Right-Click "Terminal x86_64" > Get Info > Enable Open using Rosetta
  • Click to Open the Terminal, type arch to verify it says x86_64 now.
  • Right-Click the Terminal x86_64 in your Dock and click "Keep in Dock" for future use.

It is important to install/update/deploy within the "Terminal x86_64" window now, your normal Terminal will be arm64 and won't have the same libraries. Consider full emulation as the easiest solution without a lot of workaround with flags and running multiple brew in parallel. It just works.

Source: https://betterprogramming.pub/5-things-i-have-learned-when-using-the-m1-chip-macbook-air-a77f93c50381#5a64

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    Does anyone else find it odd that 'arch' returns "i386", yet that refers specifically to 32-bit Intel ISA, which hasn't run on macOS since Mojave? The industry has adopted "amd64" and "arm64" as the names of the two prevalent ISAs.
    – Rob_vH
    May 18, 2022 at 13:44
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    it should be x86_64, probably didn't refactoring from i386, probably didn't matter until they noticed the issues requiring arm64 compiled binaries. amd64 appears to be a subset of x86_64 🤷‍♂️
    – sonjz
    May 19, 2022 at 17:36
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    @Rob_vH i see that now. found something regarding your question: stackoverflow.com/a/12763379/740575
    – sonjz
    May 25, 2022 at 1:01
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    uname -m # machine hardware name -> x86_64 , uname -p # machine processor architecture name -> i386 , and arch -x86_64 command .... # run command in x86_64 arch. So, Terminal-x86_64.app would be better.
    – Míng
    Oct 10, 2022 at 6:05
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    macOS 13 doesn’t let me duplicate my terminal anymore. Is there any solution for this yet?
    – gernophil
    Oct 25, 2022 at 19:47

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