How to Install ffi on Apple Silicon M1 in Native Mode Without Rosetta

Updated

Have you been struggling to install ffi on your M1 Mac? Have you been seeing these common errors:

Or an error like this?

[capacitor] /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/lib/ruby/2.6.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:54:in `require’: 
dlopen(/Library/Ruby/Gems/2.6.0/gems/ffi-1.15.4/lib/ffi_c.bundle, 0x0009): tried: 
‘/Library/Ruby/Gems/2.6.0/gems/ffi-1.15.4/lib/ffi_c.bundle’ 
(mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have ‘arm64’, need ‘x86_64’)), 
‘/usr/lib/ffi_c.bundle’ (no such file) - /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.6.0/gems/ffi-1.15.4/lib/ffi_c.bundle (LoadError)

You’ve probably been seeing these ffi issues while trying to get cocoapods, Capacitor, Slate, or sassc to work. Or maybe some other tool that depends on ffi.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of outdated and incorrect advice out there, which causes people to mess up their development environment.

The 4 main reasons people struggle to install ffi on their M1 Mac

1) They don’t have a proper Ruby development environment, and they’re trying to install gems using the system Ruby. Learn why you shouldn’t use the system Ruby to install gems on a Mac.

2) They’re trying to install an older version. If you’re trying to install ffi as part of a Ruby project with a Gemfile, try running bundle update ffi to get the latest version.

3) They followed outdated advice to use arch -x86_64 or run terminal in Rosetta mode.

4) They followed bad advice to use sudo. Learn why you should never use sudo to install gems.

So how can you get a proper Ruby development environment so you can finally install ffi?

How to install ffi on Apple Silicon M1 in native mode

The key to a proper Ruby development environment is to install a separate and newer version of Ruby with a version manager. At a high level, it involves these 6 steps:

  1. If you’ve already tried to set up a dev environment, especially if you’ve done anything with Rosetta or if you ran any commands with arch -x86_64, you’ll need to undo everything and start over with a clean slate.
  2. Install Homebrew (which also installs the prerequisite Apple command line tools, also known as the Xcode command line tools)
  3. Install a Ruby manager
  4. Configure the Ruby manager
  5. Install a specific version of Ruby
  6. Switch to that version of Ruby

You have two options for setting up a proper Ruby environment:

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Spend an hour or more installing everything manually

If you haven’t yet tried to install Ruby or other development tools on your Mac, you should be able to get up and running with the basics by following my free step-by-step guide for installing Ruby on a Mac.

If you’ve already tried to set things up and you’re running into issues you can’t figure out, you can still try my step-by-step guide, but Ruby on Mac will get you unstuck much faster.

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