Error installing Pyobjc on macOS 11.0 Big Sur

Question

I'm getting an error when trying to install the pyobjc library in a virtual environment on Big Sur. The installation errors out claiming that it "Cannot determine SDK version." I've done some digging, and it looks like this error is triggered by an exception in this flow.

Here's the beginning of the error:

Building wheel for pyobjc-core (setup.py) ... error
  ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
   command: /Users/me/Desktop/Projects/env/bin/python3 -u -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/private/tmp/pip-install-qixc6c89/pyobjc-core/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/private/tmp/pip-install-qixc6c89/pyobjc-core/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' bdist_wheel -d /private/tmp/pip-wheel-c0phpdjv
       cwd: /private/tmp/pip-install-qixc6c89/pyobjc-core/

And here's the end of the error:

    copying PyObjCTest/test_specialtypecodes_methdef.py -> build/lib.macosx-11.0-x86_64-3.9/PyObjCTest
    running build_ext
    Cannot determine SDK version
    ----------------------------------------
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: /Users/me/Desktop/Projects/env/bin/python3 -u -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/private/tmp/pip-install-qixc6c89/pyobjc-core/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/private/tmp/pip-install-qixc6c89/pyobjc-core/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' install --record /private/tmp/pip-record-l_v97344/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /Users/me/Desktop/Projects/env/include/site/python3.9/pyobjc-core Check the logs for full command output.

I've tried reinstalling Xcode developer tools to no avail, as I thought this might refresh the SDK references. Any help would be much appreciated.

Trying to install pyobjc version 7.0
Python version: 3.9.0, 3.8.2 (tried on both and neither work)

Does this answer your question? [Big Sur clang "invalid version" error due to MACOSX\_DEPLOYMENT\_TARGET](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63972113/big-sur-clang-invalid-version-error-due-to-macosx-deployment-target) — felipe, Nov 30 '20 at 00:34
@Felipe I don't think so. I ran `clang --version' and I got the exact same output as what you said worked for you (version 12.0.0, etc.) The one difference for me is that in my SDKs directory, I have three entries instead of two: _MacOSX.sdk_, _MacOSX10.15.sdk_, and _MacOSX11.0.sdk_. _MacOSX.sdk_ is only an alias that redirects to _MacOSX11.0.sdk_, though. — davkue, Nov 30 '20 at 00:56

playduck · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-03T07:50:07.743

I believe the issue should be resolved by now. So running pip install pyobjc should be working again as expected (tested for pyobjc-7.0.1 and python3.9.0).

If not, you can set the SDK temporarily for the current session and build it from scratch with:

SDKROOT=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk pip wheel pyobjc-core

(If it doesn't work, check what SDKs you have installed. It worked for me with MacOSX10.15, just run ls /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/ and see what's available. You need the Xcode CLI tools for this.) After that just run pip install pyobjc again to install the rest of pyobjc.

For some framework addons you might have to set cflags specifically with:

SDKROOT=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk \
    CFLAGS="-isysroot /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk" \
    pip wheel pyobjc-framework-cocoa

Again just switch MacOSX10.14.sdk with a 10.X SDK on your system.

There's more information on this related GitHub issue from which i shamelessly stole this solution from @hoefling on s.o. <3

Yep, just ran `pip install pyobjc` and it went through without any issues — davkue, Dec 03 '20 at 13:31

Dave Zhu · Answer 2 · 2020-12-01T21:38:39.067

0

I also ran into this, managed to solve it by removing the symlink and all SDKs other than 11.0 from /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs. Not entirely sure what this does for system stability or other software, but the pip install pyobjc did actually finish.

I do not claim to be an expert on MacOS development, so YMMV.

edited Dec 01 '20 at 21:38

answered Dec 01 '20 at 21:02

Dave Zhu

1
1

I'm hesitant to try this only because as you pointed out I don't know what the side-effects of removing the other SDKs/symlink might be. – davkue Dec 01 '20 at 22:20

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 07 '21 at 17:04

0

PyObjC should install using binary wheels (without compiling). Please file an issue in GitHub when it doesn't, and include information about your Python installation (such as how Python was installed).

answered Feb 07 '21 at 17:04

Ronald Oussoren

2,715
20
29

Error installing Pyobjc on macOS 11.0 Big Sur

3 Answers3