29 Jun 2020
symbol '_ffi_prep_closure' not found
I got a new computer today! It was very exciting. Unfortunately, when I tried to install homebrew, I discovered that the copy of Ruby included in macOS had a small problem that manifested in the form of this somewhat inscrutable error:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/lib/ruby/2.6.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:54:in `require': dlopen(/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/lib/ruby/2.6.0/universal-darwin20/fiddle.bundle, 0x0009): symbol '_ffi_prep_closure' not found, expected in flat namespace by '/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/lib/ruby/2.6.0/universal-darwin20/fiddle.bundle' - /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/lib/ruby/2.6.0/universal-darwin20/fiddle.bundle (LoadError)
I’m not 100% sure why the fiddle gem that came with macOS ruby wasn’t able to find the symbols it needed, but it seems like libffi changed that function name recently, so maybe that was the cause of the disconnect? Unfortunately, reinstalling the latest version of fiddle (1.0.0 at this writing) didn’t do anything to help. Happily, installing the latest commit from the git repository worked great.
To fix your fiddle gem, and thereby Ruby, allowing you to use Homebrew to slowly compile the universe from scratch, you can build and install the latest fiddle like this:
$ git clone https://github.com/ruby/fiddle
$ cd fiddle
$ bundle install --path vendor/bundle
$ bundle exec rake build
$ sudo gem install pkg/fiddle-1.0.1.gem
All set! Brew your way to greatness.
P.S. There’s one other error you might hit, but it also has a quick solution:
xcrun: error: unable to load libxcrun (dlopen(/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/lib/libxcrun.dylib, 0x0005): could not use '/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/lib/libxcrun.dylib' because it is not a compatible arch).
If you see this, run sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools; sudo xcode-select --switch /Application/Xcode-beta.app. The Homebrew installer really really wants to install those Command Line Tools, but they’re the wrong architecture and won’t ever run. Use the devtools built into Xcode-beta instead.
P.P.S. If you also want to build Ruby yourself, to get the latest version, check out this follow-up post.