Mac OS 10.16 Linking Homebrew installed libraries - macos

Question

I have been using homebrew for long time and never faced this strange issue. For some reason I will not explain here am using MacOS 10.16 (Big Sur), a Beta version of latest MacOS and have installed libraries using homebrew. One of those library is zlib. But building with CMake, It cannot find the library. I have tried to build wxWidgets as well as libcurl. Both have failed with similar error:
-- make[2]: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/libz.dylib', needed by `lib/libwx_baseu-3.1.dylib'. Stop.
make[1]: *** [libs/base/CMakeFiles/wxbase.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2
it seems like the libraries search path does not include /usr/local/opt/zlib/lib where the library is found. In another machine running 10.13 High Sierra it works fine.
brew info zlib
zlib: stable 1.2.11 (bottled) [keg-only]
General-purpose lossless data-compression library
https://zlib.net/
/usr/local/Cellar/zlib/1.2.11 (12 files, 376.4KB)
Poured from bottle on 2020-07-02 at 11:34:14
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/zlib.rb
==> Caveats
zlib is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /usr/local,
because macOS already provides this software and installing another version in
parallel can cause all kinds of trouble.
For compilers to find zlib you may need to set:
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/zlib/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/zlib/include"
For pkg-config to find zlib you may need to set:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/zlib/lib/pkgconfig"
Relevant contents of CMakeList.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.11)
# Project name
project(MyApp)
# This setting is useful for providing JSON file used by CodeLite for code completion
set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS 1)
set(CONFIGURATION_NAME "MacOSXDebug")
set(CL_WORKSPACE_DIRECTORY ..)
# Set default locations
set(CL_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/${CL_WORKSPACE_DIRECTORY}/cmake-build-${CONFIGURATION_NAME}/output)
set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY ${CL_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY})
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY ${CL_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY})
set(CMAKE_ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY ${CL_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY})
set(PROJECT_Studio_PATH "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}")
set(WORKSPACE_PATH "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/..")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
#Build wxWidgets first
message("Building wxWidgets Libraries")
execute_process(COMMAND mkdir -p ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/wxWidgets)
execute_process(COMMAND git submodule update --init
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../dependencies/wxWidgets
)
find_program(CMAKE_EXE cmake HINTS "/usr/local/bin/")
message("CMake executable at: ${CMAKE_EXE}")
execute_process(
COMMAND ${CMAKE_EXE} -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DwxUSE_EXPAT=builtin -DwxBUILD_PRECOMP=OFF ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../dependencies/wxWidgets -B ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/wxWidgets
ERROR_VARIABLE WX_BUILD_ERROR
COMMAND_ECHO STDOUT
)
message(STATUS ${WX_BUILD_OUTPUT})
message(STATUS ${WX_BUILD_ERROR})
execute_process(
COMMAND make -j4 #VERBOSE=1
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/wxWidgets
ERROR_VARIABLE WX_BUILD_ERROR
COMMAND_ECHO STDOUT
)
message(STATUS ${WX_BUILD_OUTPUT})
message(STATUS ${WX_BUILD_ERROR})
#Setup wxWidgets
set(ENV{PATH} "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/wxWidgets:$ENV{PATH}")
set(WXWIN ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/wxWidgets)
set(CMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH TRUE)
set(CMAKE_SKIP_BUILD_RPATH FALSE)
set(CMAKE_BUILD_WITH_INSTALL_RPATH TRUE)
set(CMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH_USE_LINK_PATH TRUE)
set(CMAKE_INSTALL_NAME_DIR "#rpath")
CMake Log
Log is so big that cannot be pasted here. See it here: https://pastebin.com/Mk4NrQgX
UPDATE
So I checked out and there is this strange thing happening. When I list with ls, I can see library exists:
ls /usr/lib/|grep libz
libz.1.1.3.dylib
libz.1.2.11.dylib
libz.1.2.5.dylib
But when I try for example to examine the library with otool
otool -L /usr/lib/libz.dylib
/Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/objdump: error: '/usr/lib/libz.dylib': No such file or directory
I guess the problem lies here, though am yet to crack the code
UPDATE 2
So ran ls -la /usr/lib | grep libz and as you can see it's all linking back to libz.1.dylib but that file does not exist.
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 12 Jan 1 2020 libz.1.1.3.dylib -> libz.1.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 12 Jan 1 2020 libz.1.2.11.dylib -> libz.1.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 12 Jan 1 2020 libz.1.2.5.dylib -> libz.1.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 12 Jan 1 2020 libz.1.2.8.dylib -> libz.1.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 12 Jan 1 2020 libz.dylib -> libz.1.dylib

Answer 1

We have a big epic tracker in here for MacOS 10.16/11.0 compatibility check.
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857
Feel free to escalate the issue in there (I actually saw the zlib marked as 🥇)

Answer 2

It seems some libraries in /usr/lib/are pure garbage. I can confirm zliband libiconvare corrupt, linked to non existing library. No much complain since it is a beta version. So the solution was to install brew version with brew install zlib and then overwrite terminal's current system path with
export PATH=/usr/local/opt/zlib/lib:/usr/local/opt/zlib/include:$PATH