Difficulty importing module in Python that was installed via homebrew on M1 Pro Mac

Question

I'm currently developing a script called script.py that makes use of the libmagic package. I used homebrew (3.5.9) to install it via ZSH shell on an M1 Pro Mac.

As with any homebrew package installation, I used brew install libmagic and it installed successfully, but by the time I tried to import it to my program with import magic, the ModuleNotFoundError was thrown.

At first, I thought the module was not found because it was installed as a third party module, so I added the path to $PYTHONPATH and I verified it via printing each entries with sys.path. But, I still get the same error.

One assumption I made here is that the path I gave to $PYTHONPATH is where the magic module is located, but I think I have done something wrong here because the module search path clearly has the path I included so why is it still throwing the same error?

Clearly, the path listed in $PYTHONPATH was included as shown below, so why can't the module be found?

I'm suspecting that I'm not using the right directory for my $PYTHONPATH and most tutorials out there uses an Intel chip which has a different file structure than the one in M1 Pro. The packages installed in the M1 Pro are stored under /opt/homebrew/Cellar and I might have missed some important steps.

Anybody who has experienced similar problems, please show me the way. Thank you.

Answer 1

You can download the official version of libmagic module with these commands

> pip install python-magic
            or
> pip3 install python-magic ## if you have different versions of python installed

or if u dont have pip installed install it by using these commands

> curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
> python3 get-pip.py

Answer 2

Install libmagic on Apple Silicon Macs based on M1 or M2 (or Mx):

Step 1) First, try to uninstall any other already-installed libmagic libraries and then install python-magic-bin:

$ pip uninstall python-magic
$ pip install python-magic-bin

If it was successful, then you are all set! If that fails, however, that means the wheel (binary) is not found for your Mac, then head to Step 2.

Step 2) Install libmagic via Homebrew:

$ brew install libmagic

Step 3) Copy the magic directory from the repository to the directory where your Python environment libraries are located. Run $ pip list -v to be able to locate the path to your libraries directory. As an explanation on the origin of the magic directory, it has been derived from an Intel-based Mac with python-magic installed via pip.

Step 4) Copy libmagic.dylib from the lib directory in the libmagic that Homebrew has installed to the magic/libmagic directory in Step 3 to replace the YOUR_libmagic.dylib. Please note that you need to copy the original file, not the alias (symbolic link). Run $ brew list -v to help you locate the path to the library installed by Homebrew. A typical path looks like /usr/local/Cellar/libmagic/5.44/lib.

If you have done the steps above, then you are going to be able to import libmagic:

import magic