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Mar 12 2014

Bypassing “clang: error: unknown argument”

Note: I originally wrote the blog post while installing mitmproxy on OS X Mavericks, but it is relevant to the “unknown argument” error in general, so keep reading.

Having a Mac laptop is like going on a journey every single day… My latest issue happened today while installing mitmproxy and then trying to navigate to various Amazon pages. The problem was intermittent, making it harder to diagnose.

Then I tested that same website but with the article about rose toys: https://comprogear.com/rose-toy/.

Python’s pip was exiting with the following error:

clang: error: unknown argument: ‘-mno-fused-madd’ [-Wunused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future]

Well, it turns out that the latest (5.1) version of Xcode ships with a compiler that treats unknown passed parameters as errors. From the changelog:

The Apple LLVM compiler in Xcode 5.1 treats unrecognized command-line options as errors. This issue has been seen when building both Python native extensions and Ruby Gems, where some invalid compiler options are currently specified.

Projects using invalid compiler options will need to be changed to remove those options. To help ease that transition, the compiler will temporarily accept an option to downgrade the error to a warning:

-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future

Note: This option will not be supported in the future.

To workaround this issue, set the ARCHFLAGS environment variable to downgrade the error to a warning. For example, you can install a Python native extension with:

$ ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future easy_install ExtensionName

Similarly, you can install a Ruby Gem with:

$ ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future gem install GemName 16214764 updated

So, basically you can install mitmproxy (or any other program with a similar error) by:

ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future pip install mitmproxy

Bear in mind that you if you need to combine the above with sudo, you will need to add it the beginning of the command and not before “pip”. Otherwise you can also run the above logged in as root user from the start.

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  • Deadman44

    Thank your very much. I had the same issue with (ruby) gem installing sqlite3.

    • http://bruteforce.gr/ Ion

      Glad that it helped you! Yeap, Python & Ruby are both affected.

  • http://matthiasott.de Matthias Ott

    Thanks a lot! I successfully (gem) installed Breakpoint for Sass with this snippet.

    • http://bruteforce.gr/ Ion

      Great! It seems like a common error these days. Blame Apple :)

  • Burak

    Great. Thank you for the solution. Solved my nightmare.

  • Sam

    Fixed the problem I was having with installing the alpha release of compass, many thanks!

  • http://www.telecommutetojuryduty.com/ Dominick

    super useful. fixed my problem for ‘gem install rmagick’. cheers!

    • http://bruteforce.gr/ Ion

      Hi Dominick, glad it worked!

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  • http://taidevcouk.wordpress.com Daniel Bryant

    Awesome! Solved my issues with ‘pip install mitmproxy’ - many thanks for the post :-)

    • http://bruteforce.gr/ Ion

      Hello Daniel, this was initially what I was trying to install as well :)

  • John

    Excellent and thank you… worked for ‘gem install nokogiri’

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  • tweisbach

    You can use sudo the following way: sudo ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future pip install mitmproxy

    • Ugs

      You can also append:

      Defaults env_keep += “ARCHFLAGS”

      to the list env env_keep additions to make sure ARCHFLAGS is maintained by sudo, and then add:

      export ARCHFLAGS=’-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future’

      to your ~/.bashrc to hide all this craziness

      • Ugs

        sorry, append Defaults env_keep += “ARCHFLAGS” in /etc/sudoers

  • Srinivas HN

    it solved my mavericks issues
    Thanks lot

  • http://esevece.tumblr.com/ Stefano

    Thank you! Problems installing a gem on Mavericks here.

  • AA

    your solution is the only one that worked

  • QS

    I judge you for spelling “bear” as “bare”, but I appreciate your assistance.

    • http://bruteforce.gr/ Ion

      Hah, thanks QS.

  • Pingback: It's a pain when you have to work around things like this on a development m… « iandouglas.com

  • Ethan Eldridge

    Extremely useful! Thanks so much, pycrypto was giving this error on a clients computer

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