[question] Building libraries universal binaries for Apple MacOS

[wizard-123]

What is your question?

My system is macOS, and I want to use the Conan library to compile my code, but I want to use a universal binary version of the library. Does Conan support this, and if so, how should I use it?

Have you read the CONTRIBUTING guide?

• I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide

[memsharded]

Hi @wizard-123

Thanks for the question.

My system is macOS, and I want to use the Conan library to compile my code, but I want to use a universal binary version of the library. Does Conan support this, and if so, how should I use it?

What do you mean for that? That you already have a pre-compiled binary that is a universal binary and you want to create a Conan package for it with conan export-pkg so you can use that pre-compiled binary as a Conan package?

Or if you have your own code, why would you want to create a universal binary? Conan does support it, but in general it is recommended to use the 1 binary architecture, because that scales and works better in many cases, Conan can manage the architectures automatically, etc, so it is not an issue. Then if you need to deploy things outside of Conan as universal binaries you get them (for example with a deployer) and "lipo" them together to create the universal binary for the final deployment you want to do.

Otherwise, check:

• https://docs.conan.io/2/reference/tools/cmake/cmaketoolchain.html#conan-tools-cmaketoolchain-universal-binaries

Check the warnings, it is experimental, and it has limitations. For example, not all build systems support creating universal binaries out of the box, only CMakeToolchain and AutotoolsToolchain support that. That means if you want to use any other ConanCenter recipe that uses a different build system, it will not be possible. This is why in general it is more recommended to use binaries per-architecture, then "lipo" them together at the end step.

[memsharded]

Any further question or issue here @wizard-123 ?
Thanks for the feedback