Why does GCC compiler using ARM64 format on Apple silicon compile X86_64 format?

[CNSTJiatongLee]

I set platform=native on Mac M1 and it compiles using my native gcc compiler. Why is my native gcc compiler in ARM64 format and able to compile x86_64 files? This caused an error when linking to sdl2 in arm64 format that homebrew downloaded

[tylerwowen]

I ran into the same problem.

For my situation, the Platform IO installed was Darwin_x86_64. It is because platform IO's builtin python is Intel for some reason.

pio  system info
--------------------------  ---------------------------------------------
PlatformIO Core             6.1.13
Python                      3.11.7-final.0
System Type                 darwin_x86_64

To fix, I did the following

1. Uninstall the PlatformIO ID extension from VSCode.
2. Change VSCode config "platformio-ide.useBuiltinPython": false (default was true)
3. Exit VSCode.
4. Remove the $HOME/.platformio created by the PlatformIO IDE
5. Reinstall the PlatformIO. Now I got the right version.

pio  system info
--------------------------  ---------------------------------------------
PlatformIO Core             6.1.13
Python                      3.9.6-final.0
System Type                 darwin_arm64

[navanchauhan]

Just in case someone else stumbles upon this issue. I gave up on using the VSCode IDE and instead just installed paltformio via homebrew

brew install platformio

I also had to change python to python3 in the platformio.ini file (Or, you can set an alias from python -> python)