How to install valgrind on macOS Big Sur?

Question

I have recently purchased an M1 MacBook Pro and I am having issues installing valgrind on macOS Big Sur. What I have tried so far is:

• brew install valgrind which pops the error (brew is updated)

Error: invalid attribute for formula 'valgrind': version (nil)

• edited head as indicated here
• download manually from GitHub following all indications listed but I get

Last 15 lines from /Users/homeuser/Library/Logs/Homebrew/valgrind/03.make:
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/mach/i386/thread_status.h:254:9: error: unknown type name '_STRUCT_X86_DEBUG_STATE64'
typedef _STRUCT_X86_DEBUG_STATE64 x86_debug_state64_t;
        ^
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/mach/i386/thread_status.h:260:9: error: unknown type name '_STRUCT_X86_PAGEIN_STATE'
typedef _STRUCT_X86_PAGEIN_STATE x86_pagein_state_t;
        ^
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/mach/i386/thread_status.h:266:9: error: unknown type name '_STRUCT_X86_INSTRUCTION_STATE'
typedef _STRUCT_X86_INSTRUCTION_STATE x86_instruction_state_t;
        ^
fatal error: too many errors emitted, stopping now [-ferror-limit=]
20 errors generated.
make[2]: *** [fixup_macho_loadcmds] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

• looked into this older fix that used to work

Unfortunately none of the methods work so I would really appreciate a solve to this problem as I need to use valgrind on a daily basis for university homework.

Answer 1

Definitive answer. See the configure.ac autoconf file for the exact details. Starting from line 5021 [which may change in future versions, obviously] there is a switch on the kernel versions.

The last version of macOS officially supported by Valgrind was 10.13 on Intel. Neither macOS 11 (any architecture) nor ARM are supported.

Getting Valgrind to work on macOS 11 ARM hardware would require

• filling in all of the gaps from 10.13 to 11
• ARM assembly code for low level functions like syscalls

There is Linux ARM support, so the second point might not be so difficult. I don't have an ARM based mac, so I'm not vounteering for the moment.