Storm

Building for ARM-based Apple Silicon Systems

Storm compiles natively on ARM-based Apple Silicon processors. However, there are a few points to consider for troubleshooting.

Compiling with x86 Emulation

In some cases, e.g. when an older Storm version needs to be used, it might be necessary to compile an x86 version of Storm that can be run on Apple Silicon systems using Emulation via Rosetta 2.

x86 Emulation and Development Tools

Install Rosetta 2 and either the command line tools (CLT) or Xcode. Installing Rosetta 2 and the CLT can be done using the terminal by executing

$ softwareupdate --install-rosetta
$ xcode-select --install

The following steps should be performed inside a x86 shell so that universal binaries are invoked correctly. If you are using zsh (which is the default shell on macOS), this can be done by executing arch -x86_64 zsh. To easily see that your shell runs in x86 mode, you can add the following lines to your ~/.zshrc file:

# modify the prompt if in x86 mode
if [[ $(uname -m) == 'x86_64' ]]; then
	expot PROMPT="%F{cyan}x86%f:$PROMPT"
fi

Homebrew

You need a homebrew installation for x86 compilation, preferably in /usr/local/. This can be done via

$ arch -x86_64 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

You can have seperate homebrew installations that use default paths for x86 and ARM, respectively. One valid configuration would be to have one homebrew installation for x86 compilation in /usr/local/ and one for ARM compilation in /opt/homebrew/.

We set an alias brew86 to ensure that the x86 homebrew installation is invoked.

$ alias brew86=arch -x86_64 /usr/local/bin/brew  # change path if necessary.

Confirm that homebrew recognizes CLT or Xcode by querying

$ brew86 config | grep 'CLT\|Xcode'

If the output provides no information for both entries, like so:

CLT: N/A
Xcode: N/A

you need to reinstall either suites. Downloading CLT directly from Apples website fixes this issue for some users.

Finally, check that Rosetta 2 can be detected by Homebrew:

$ brew86 config | grep 'Rosetta 2'

If you have never run any application using Rosetta 2, a popup will appear asking you to install it. If the above command yields

Rosetta 2: true

you are ready to continue.

General Dependencies

Install the x86 version of the general dependencies of Storm using homebrew. You need to enable x86 emulation (through Rosetta 2) by prefixing the brew command with arch -x86_64, e.g. by using the brew86 alias that we set above.

If the wrong homebrew installation is specified, the installations are done to paths used for ARM binaries which will not work for x86 emulation.

CMake

ARM versions of CMake do often not play nicely with the compilation of dependencies Storm is using, which is why we recommend to use a x86 version of cmake. Check which architecture your cmake executable is targeting by executing:

$ file $(which cmake)

Ensure that the output is Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 or Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64]. If instead Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64 is prompted, you need to locate a cmake executable that is either targeting x86 architectures or an universal binary with x86 support. The following command iterates over registered cmake installations and displays those that are compatible:

$ where cmake | sort | uniq | while read l; do if [[ $(file $line) == *"x86"* ]] then echo "x86 compatible CMake at: $l"; fi; done

If you have used Homebrew to install cmake, you can also find the installation using this command instead:

$ file $(arch -x86_64 $X86_BREW --prefix cmake)/bin/cmake

where $X86_BREW is as explained above.

There are known issues when compiling Storm using older versions of CMake. These issues seem to have been fixed with cmake version 3.19.5. Make sure to use the latest version of CMake.

Building Storm from Source.

You can now obtain, configure, and build Storm as outlined here.