`ImportError ... symbol not found` from reportlab on Apple Silicon

[bhrutledge]

See also https://github.com/SmileyChris/easy-thumbnails/issues/585#issuecomment-1049776338 and https://github.com/django-cms/django-filer/issues/1277.

This looks like a bug in reportlab, which seems to be discussed in these threads:

• [reportlab-users] Symbol not found in flat namespace when running on macOS 12.0.1
• [reportlab-users] Fwd: Symbol not found in flat namespace when running on macOS 12.0.1

Here's a minimal reproducing script, running in a fresh Python 3.9 virtual environment on an M1 MacBook Air:

% python3 -m venv venv-reportlab && source venv-reportlab/bin/activate && pip install -U setuptools pip wheel

% which python3 && python3 -V
/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/bin/python3
Python 3.9.6

% pip install django-filer
...
Successfully installed Unidecode-1.1.2 asgiref-3.5.0 cssselect2-0.4.1 django-3.2.12 django-filer-2.1.2 django-js-asset-2.0.0 django-mptt-0.13.4 django-polymorphic-3.0.0 easy-thumbnails-2.8.1 lxml-4.8.0 pillow-9.0.1 pytz-2021.3 reportlab-3.6.7 sqlparse-0.4.2 svglib-1.2.1 tinycss2-1.1.1 webencodings-0.5.1

% python3 -c '
from django.conf import settings
settings.configure(
    INSTALLED_APPS=[
        "django.contrib.contenttypes",
        "django.contrib.auth",
        "easy_thumbnails",
        "filer",
    ]
)

import django
django.setup()
'
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/filer/fields/multistorage_file.py", line 9, in <module>
    from easy_thumbnails import fields as easy_thumbnails_fields
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/easy_thumbnails/fields.py", line 2, in <module>
    from easy_thumbnails import files
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/easy_thumbnails/files.py", line 17, in <module>
    from easy_thumbnails.VIL.Image import load
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/easy_thumbnails/VIL/Image.py", line 7, in <module>
    from reportlab.graphics import renderSVG
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/reportlab/graphics/renderSVG.py", line 22, in <module>
    from .renderPM import _getImage
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/reportlab/graphics/renderPM.py", line 20, in <module>
    from .utils import setFont as _setFont, RenderPMError
  File "/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/reportlab/graphics/utils.py", line 9, in <module>
    from . _renderPM import makeT1Font
ImportError: dlopen(/private/tmp/venv-reportlab/lib/python3.9/site-packages/reportlab/graphics/_renderPM.cpython-39-darwin.so, 0x0002): symbol not found in flat namespace '_FT_Done_Face'

A workaround is to install reportlab from source:

% pip freeze | xargs pip uninstall -y

% pip install --no-binary reportlab django-filer
...
  Running setup.py install for reportlab ... done
Successfully installed Unidecode-1.1.2 asgiref-3.5.0 cssselect2-0.4.1 django-3.2.12 django-filer-2.1.2 django-js-asset-2.0.0 django-mptt-0.13.4 django-polymorphic-3.0.0 easy-thumbnails-2.8.1 lxml-4.8.0 pillow-9.0.1 pytz-2021.3 reportlab-3.6.7 sqlparse-0.4.2 svglib-1.2.1 tinycss2-1.1.1 webencodings-0.5.1

With that, the python3 -c command above runs without error.

The same error can be seen running tox -e py38-dj32-noswap in the django-filer repo.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[stale[bot]]

This will now be closed due to inactivity, but feel free to reopen it.