Incorrect bindings architecture installed on Intel MacOS

[MaddyGuthridge]

Describe the bug

Reporting on behalf of a student in a course I teach. I am unable to reproduce this myself, as my system is linux-x86-64.

Example error:

FAIL  src/Tests/auth.test.ts
  ● Test suite failed to run
 
    dlopen(/Users/someone/project-backend/node_modules/node-libcurl/lib/binding/node_libcurl.node, 0x0001): tried: '/Users/someone/project-backend/node_modules/node-libcurl/lib/binding/node_libcurl.node' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'arm64', need 'x86_64h' or 'x86_64')), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/Users/someone/project-backend/node_modules/node-libcurl/lib/binding/node_libcurl.node' (no such file), '/Users/someone/project-backend/node_modules/node-libcurl/lib/binding/node_libcurl.node' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'arm64', need 'x86_64h' or 'x86_64'))

Attempted workarounds (none of these have helped):

• rm -r node_modules && npm i
• npm cache clean --force and above
• rm package-lock.json and above

Node correctly detects the environment:

% node -p 'process.arch'
x64

As does uname:

% uname -a
Darwin Someones-Macbook-Air-3.local 23.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 23.6.0: Mon Aug 11 21:19:08 PDT 2025; root:xnu-10063.141.1.706.13~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

The bindings are indeed for arm64 instead of x86-64:

% file node_modules/node-libcurl/lib/binding/node_libcurl.node
node_modules/node-libcurl/lib/binding/node_libcurl.node: Mach-O 64-bit bundle arm64

To Reproduce

1. npm i [package that uses node-libcurl]
2. Run code that uses node-libcurl
3. Error

Version information:

% npm ls node-libcurl
project-backend@ /Users/nicholasaoun/project-backend
└─┬ sync-request-curl@4.0.0
  └── node-libcurl@5.0.2

OS: MacOS 14.8
Node.js Version: 24

Node was installed using nvm (nvm install 24). I do not believe that the student made any configuration changes.

Additional context

Any additional troubleshooting steps would be appreciated.

[MaddyGuthridge]

Update: another course tutor @Dasyure was able to reproduce this issue on their machine, indicating that this isn't just a one-off issue.

[Dasyure]

If you inspect the x64 tarball by running:

curl -L -o /tmp/node_libcurl_x64.tar.gz \
  "https://github.com/JCMais/node-libcurl/releases/download/v5.0.2/node_libcurl-v5.0.2-node-v137-darwin-x64-unknown.tar.gz"

tar -xzf /tmp/node_libcurl_x64.tar.gz -C /tmp/

file /tmp/binding/node_libcurl.node

You get the following, which shows there's a wrong binary in the x64 package.

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 3890k  100 3890k    0     0  1391k      0  0:00:02  0:00:02 --:--:-- 1355k
/tmp/binding/node_libcurl.node: Mach-O 64-bit bundle arm64

[JCMais]

Hey, thanks for reporting this.

I found the root cause, will be fixed today.