[MacOS] Installing Alice/LG on the new M1 chip fails

[regcs]

There might be some issue with installing the add-on on macOS with hardware that uses Apple's new M1 chip. Still need some confirmation and error logs.

[regcs]

@BryanChrisBrown If you find the time to post some error logs here, that would be great. Thank you!

[BryanChrisBrown]

Hi @regcs looks like the only file in the logs directory on the add-on is the init.py file, is there somewhere else I'm supposed to be looking?

[regcs]

Hi @regcs looks like the only file in the logs directory on the add-on is the init.py file, is there somewhere else I'm supposed to be looking?

Actually, you should find the log files in there. If they are not there that indicates that the error happens during add-on initialization or the error is in the log module 😅
Ok, then maybe running in terminal mode could still provide some info. Could you try that and see if the terminal gives some output?

[regcs]

@BryanChrisBrown In case you find some time, could you try to start Blender in console mode again on the Mac M1 to see, if get some information from that?

[BryanChrisBrown]

Here are the log files for both the Alice-lg.log and side-packages-install.log

side-packages-install.log

Collecting pynng
  Using cached pynng-0.7.1.tar.gz (3.8 MB)
Collecting cbor
  Using cached cbor-1.0.0.tar.gz (20 kB)
Using legacy 'setup.py install' for cbor, since package 'wheel' is not installed.
Installing collected packages: cbor
    Running setup.py install for cbor: started
    Running setup.py install for cbor: finished with status 'done'
Successfully installed cbor-1.0.0
Collecting pillow
  Downloading Pillow-8.3.2-cp39-cp39-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (2.8 MB)
Installing collected packages: pillow
Successfully installed pillow-8.3.2
###################################
Installed: 2021-10-11 21:54:18.146034
###################################
Collecting pynng
  Using cached pynng-0.7.1.tar.gz (3.8 MB)
###################################
Installed: 2021-10-11 21:54:25.341656
###################################

Alice-lg.log

[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 - ----------------------------------------------
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 - Initializing 'Alice/LG v2.0.2' ...
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 -  [#] Add-on path: /Users/bryanchrisbrown/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.93/scripts/addons/AliceLG-2
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 -  [#] Could not find module 'pynng'.
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 -  [#] Could not find module 'cbor'.
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 -  [#] Could not find module 'PIL'.
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 -  [#] Found module 'pylightio' v.1.0.0.
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:08 -  [#] Missing dependencies. Please install them in the preference pane.
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:12 - Installing missing side-packages. See '/Users/bryanchrisbrown/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.93/scripts/addons/AliceLG-2/logs/side-packages-install.log' for details.
[INFO] 10/11/2021 21:54:23 - Installing missing side-packages. See '/Users/bryanchrisbrown/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.93/scripts/addons/AliceLG-2/logs/side-packages-install.log' for details.

[regcs]

Thanks, @BryanChrisBrown. That looks like there is something going wrong during either the installation of the side-packages or the loading of these modules on start-up. Could you have a look inside the /Users/bryanchrisbrown/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.93/scripts/addons/AliceLG-2/lib/ folder and make a screenshot so that I can see it's content?

Also: The folder name of your add-on is AliceLG-2. Are there two instances of the add-on installed?

[BryanChrisBrown]

just one version of the add-on installed/enabled. I'll try renaming it to just AliceLG

[BryanChrisBrown]

just adding an update here that the issue seems to stem from pynng not having an m1 build currently:
codypiersall/pynng#89

[regcs]

We now verified that the issue was due to pynng not compiling properly on M1 architectures. Since the developer of that python package seems to be quite busy at the moment, we will do the following as a workaround:

Use a pre-compiled wheel of pynng for M1 Macs, which will be bundled with Alice/LG. This wheel will be used for installation of pynng on M1 Macs. Other operating systems will still install pynng from the web via pip. As soon as pynng was updated in the original repository, we will remove the bundled wheel again.

[orcinus]

This is still an issue in 2023.
Exact same symptom, exact same cause.

[AlexNorth365]

This is still an issue in 2023. I installed version 2.2.1. It still automatically downloads a version of pynng that is not apple m1 compliant. Then the plug-in cannot be installed.

[regcs]

The issue was fixed until Dec 25, 2023. It seems, a new version of pynng was released after two years – so I need to recompile for Apple Silicon, since it is not done by the author of pynng.