Compile Canvas on Apple Silicon Mac using custom library paths and without installling using homebrew

[SZTankWang]

Issue or Feature

• If this is an issue with installation, I have read the troubleshooting guide.

I'm currently on Mac M1, and am using node canvas for development. The issue is that once other people tries to run my project on other Apple M1 computer, they cannot run the project if they don't have the prerequisite libraries installed (
brew install pkg-config cairo pango libpng jpeg giflib librsvg pixman python-setuptools). Although this can be solved by installing those libraries first, is there a way to make node canvas compile on Apple M1 computer without using homebrew, so that my users won't need to worry about using homebrew?

An ideal solution would be to include those libraries somewhere in my own node project, but how do I make canvas use custom dependency path when compiling?

Your Environment

• Version of node-canvas 2.11.2
• Environment (e.g. node 20.12.2 on macOS 14.2.1):
• Mac Apple Silicon

[mn4367]

...is there a way to make node canvas compile on Apple M1 computer without using homebrew, so that my users won't need to worry about using homebrew?

Probably not, but work is currently underway to provide standalone Canvas modules for Apple Silicon, please see this issue: #2354.

Currently you'd have to build an Apple Silicon version of canvas containing all the dylibs and ship the module as part of your product. More details about this procedure can be found in the mentioned issue.

[SZTankWang]

Hi @mn4367, I read your comments in #2354, do you still have a prebuilt M1 version currently, I would love to try it on my computer to see if it works.

Probably not, but work is currently underway to provide standalone Canvas modules for Apple Silicon, please see this issue: #2354.

Currently you'd have to build an Apple Silicon version of canvas containing all the dylibs and ship the module as part of your product. More details about this procedure can be found in the mentioned issue.

[mn4367]

This was built and signed as described in #2036 on a MacBook Air M1 on Sonoma 14.5. Please drop me a note after downloading so that I can delete the Zip from Dropbox.

[SZTankWang]

@mn4367 thanks a lot, downloaded.

[mn4367]

@SZTankWang, does it work?

[SZTankWang]

@mn4367 right now mac still prompts security warning, and I have to do sudo spctl --master-disable to make the library loads successful. After that everything works well
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[mn4367]

I assume you downloaded the Zip with a browser, right? In this case the OS sets a quarantine attribute on the file (and probably all of its content after unpacking). sudo spctl --master-disable is perhaps a bit drastic since it works globally and permanently (as far as I know), instead it should be sufficient to just use xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine <file>. Also the security warning shouldn't appear if the file was downloaded with curl or something similar.