How to solve "pdftk: Bad CPU type in executable" on Mac?

Question

I want to use pdftk but I always get this error zsh: bad CPU type in executable: pdftk I reinstalled pdftk and I changed the terminal from bsh to zsh as I found in my search for how to solve this error but without any success. I'm using the latest MacOS version "Catalina v10.15.4"

Answer 1

This version of pdftk works on macOS Catalina (10.15).

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

The link on the website is not up to date. That means by clicking the download button on the website you get an old version.

Answer 2

As a preliminary solution, I was successful in installing the Intel version of homebrew in /usr/local (in parallel to the M1 version in /opt/homebrew) using Apple's Rosetta 2 layer. The Intel packages (homebrew formulae) seem to work without any problem on the Apple M1 architecture. Both pdftk and pandoc work even without prefixing 'arch -x86_64' (eg, the command 'pandoc sample.md -o sample.html' as in the example linked below).

Commands:

arch -x86_64 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
alias ibrew='arch -x86_64 /usr/local/bin/brew'
ibrew analytics off
ibrew install pdftk-java
ibrew install pandoc

Further information:

• Homebrew on Apple Silicon
• Install Homebrew with Rosetta
• Main thread

Answer 3

The macos-10.11 link above worked for me on macOS 10.15 Catalina.

I emailed Sid Steward at PDF Labs about the old link. Hopefully he will update it on the PDF Labs website ;-)

Answer 4

Homebrew:

brew install pdftk-java

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pdftk-java

Compatible with Catalina, Big Sur