Apple Silicon support in Homebrew

[fxcoudert]

Current status

We now have a majority of our formulas bottled for Apple Silicon: 70%. However, not all software is ready for ARM processors on macOS, and since we ship what upstream releases, there will be some formulas that take a long time to be fixed, have a new release… and some which will never support ARM.

Our level of support is this: Homebrew strives to ship ARM bottles for software that does support ARM. We can't fix every software that's out there, and we won't accept feature requests like “formula Z does not support ARM can you fix it”. The most useful way you can help that software work on ARM is to open a bug report with the software developers.

What formulas are supported? The ones that have an ARM bottle, i.e. an arm64_big_sur line in the bottle block. You can also check online at https://formulae.brew.sh

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How you can help

• If there is a formula that builds from source for you, and whose test is passing on Apple Silicon (brew install -s foo && brew test foo both work), please leave a comment below to let us know and we'll try building a bottle
• If you know of a formula update that makes it work on Apple Silicon, please open a pull request for that update, using brew bump-formula-pr
• If you care about specific software, trying building it from source, and if it fails, debug the issue and report it to its developers. This is the most useful thing you can do for the community ❤️

Also:

• Do not report as “broken” formulas that are not bottled: instead, contact the software developers so they release a new version that works on Appel Silicon!

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Current major blockers

We know these are not currently working, and are widely used. We are tracking their developers' progress and will be incorporating them as soon as possible:

• ghc ghc: add support for Apple Silicon homebrew-core#65997
• luajit
• gtk-mac-integration https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/runs/1621017279?check_suite_focus=true
• dep
• mono
• kubernetes-cli
• terraform darwin/arm64 build hashicorp/terraform#27257
• jack jack: patches for ARM homebrew-core#68079

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PS: We had a previous gigantic issue tracking our work in previous months (before we roll out official support) at #7857 If you're trying to build something from source, be sure to go check there if someone has tried before you :)

[carlocab]

There was a PR for ghc (8.10.2) here: Homebrew/homebrew-core#65997

It may need to be rebased against master in the next day or so, as I think ghc 8.10.3 Homebrew/homebrew-core#67284 will be ready to merge soon.

[AddoSolutions]

Just to confirm my understanding here, the Homebrew (the package manager) software itself is M1 ready, the installer script is pending Homebrew/install#373, and then there will be subsequent packages that require some hand-holding, however for the ~70% of packages out there that are ARM ready will be good to go with that MR?

There is a TON of info flying around and want just to verify understanding.

[Mushroom]

Would it be worth linking to the relevant PRs for the ones still in progress? (ie, Homebrew/homebrew-core#67170 for QT) Scratch that, beat me to it while I was writing the comment!

Are there any formulas in particular that need help/work on? I'm happy to take a look at some, I'm new to macOS, but I know a lot about build systems and the arm architecture.

[fxcoudert]

@AddoSolutions yes, that sums it up nicely. We will communicate more clearly on this, in the next few days, through an official announcement.

@Mushroom if you could sort out Qt, you'd be a hero :)

[Mushroom]

@fxcoudert I'll try my best to try and reproduce that issue! If it helps I can provide a pre-built bottle? (minus webengine)

[fxcoudert]

@Mushroom no we'll only ship things we can build on our own machines, for reasons of security

[Mushroom]

@fxcoudert Understood, will try and investigate

[r58Playz]

x265 works. Both brew install and brew test are sucessful.

[carlocab]

There's a PR open for x265: Homebrew/homebrew-core#67758

It'll take a while to get through CI.

[sunilshah]

This may be off-topic but it is not clear how to install brew safely on an M1 machine to run both Rosetta 2 and arm64 versions of brew packages. I already have brew running under Rosetta2.

Running installation script natively, gives

 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Homebrew is not (yet) supported on ARM processors!
Rerun the Homebrew installer under Rosetta 2.
If you really know what you are doing and are prepared for a very broken
experience you can use another installation option for installing on ARM:
  https://docs.brew.sh/Installation

The instructions on alternate installation are unclear-it merely states what not to do, rather than what to do step by step.

[fxcoudert]

@sunilshah The installer will be ready in a couple of days: Homebrew/install#373

[richiksc]

@fxcoudert I had assumed that Homebrew/homebrew-core#67577 being merged meant that arm64 bottles would not be overwritten by new versions bottled by BrewTestBot. However, it looks like ARM bottles are still manually added and that BrewTestBot overrides ARM bottles - what is still needed in order for BrewTestBot to build arm64 bottles alongside the others and upload them together?

[fxcoudert]

@richiksc pull requests opened before I merged Homebrew/homebrew-core#67577 might still erase ARM bottles, but I am keeping watch for those and rebuilding them. Is any bottle currently missing?