M1 Mac - GDAL Wrong Architecture Error [Django]

Question

I'm trying to get a django project up and running, which depends on GDAL library. I'm working on a M1 based mac.

Following the instructions on official Django docs , I've installed the necessary packages via brew

$ brew install postgresql
$ brew install postgis
$ brew install gdal
$ brew install libgeoip

gdalinfo --version runs fine and shows the version as 3.3.1

gdal-config --libs returns this path: -L/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.3.1_2/lib -lgdal

a symlink is also placed on the homebrew's lib directory, which is in my path env variable.

When I try to run django without specifying the path to gdal library, it complains that it cannot find the GDAL package (even though the library is reachable, as a symlink to it is available through path env variable).

When I try to specify the path to the GDAL library using GDAL_LIBRARY_PATH , I get this error:

OSError: dlopen(/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.3.1_2/lib/libgdal.dylib, 6): no suitable image found.  Did find:
    /opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.3.1_2/lib/libgdal.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
    /opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.3.1_2/lib/libgdal.29.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture

Ps I've already seen this answer , but it didn't help.

Isn't that strange when I try to run gdalinfo it runs fine but when django tries to run it throws me this error? What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Try using the new arm version of python!

brew install --cask miniforge
conda init zsh
conda activate
conda install numpy scipy scikit-learn

Answer 2

GDAL and Python are likely compiled for different CPU architectures. On an M1 system the OS can run both native arm64 and emulated x86_64 binaries.

To check: run file /opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.3.1_2/lib/libgdal.dylib and file $(which python3) , which should show the supported CPU architectures for both.

If the two don't match you'll have to reinstall one of them. Note that if you reinstall Python you also have to reinstall all Python packages with C extensions.

Answer 3

If you do not need this to run natively on the M1, consider using a Linux Virtual Machine.

My ultimate solution to this problem was to create an Ubuntu VM using Canonical's Multipass on my M1 Mac, then install postgresql, postgis, and all relevant dependencies including GDAL as one would for Linux.

https://multipass.run/

I used the following to install postgres and postgis:

sudo apt-get install libpq-dev #required for psycop2-binary installation
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'

wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get -y install postgresql-13 #or other version number

sudo apt install postgis postgresql-13-postgis-3

sudo -i -u postgres
createuser yourusername
createdb postgis_db -O yourusername #create your db
psql -d postgis_db
CREATE EXTENSION postgis;

#make sure these are all installed:

sudo apt-get install binutils libproj-dev gdal-bin
sudo apt-get install libgeos++
sudo apt-get install proj-bin
sudo apt-get install gdal-bin

I SSH into the ubuntu VM through VSCode and develop django per usual. There's a good article on Multipass setup here.

I've had no issues with this setup on M1.

Answer 4

I stumbled with the same issue, in my case it was solved by adding the GDAL_LIBRARY_PATH in the settings.py, but also GEOS_LIBRARY_PATH

GDAL_LIBRARY_PATH = '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gdal/3.4.1_1/lib/libgdal.dylib'
GEOS_LIBRARY_PATH = '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/geos/3.10.2/lib/libgeos_c.1.16.0.dylib'