node-gyp rebuild fails in macOS Catalina

I have been struggling with this issue and I couldn’t find out how to solve till today. I don’t know if it is really related to macOS Catalina. But it started to happen after I upgraded my mac.

So let’s begin.

DISCLAIMER

This is my solution and it worked for me.

It might not work for you but I think it is the safest way.

Remove yarn and yarn global folders

Remove Yarn

 brew uninstall yarn

Remove yarn global packages

rm -rf /Users/[USER_NAME]/.config/yarn

Remove yarn global config

rm /Users/[USER_NAME]/.yarnrc

We remove yarn completely with all config. You can save your config file and use it later on.

Remove node and npm global folders

Remove Node

brew uninstall node

Remove npm global packages

rm -rf /usr/local/lib/node_modules

Remove npm cache

rm -rf /Users/[USER_NAME]/.npm

Remove npm global config

rm /Users/[USER_NAME]/.npmrc

Remove all caches

In these folders

/Users/ismail/Library/Caches

/Users/ismail/Library/Application Support

remove all yarn or npm related folders.

Remove node-gyp

Search with this command

mdfind kind:folder "node-gyp"

and remove all the results.

Remove xcode-select

I assume you do not have xcode installed. You only use command line tools.

Run this commands

rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

sudo xcode-select -r

Last command prompts you to install software update. Let it install. You basically installing xcode command line tools. If there won’t be any prompt run following:

xcode-select --install

3. After installation make sure xcode-select is working from correct path with the following command:

sudo xcode-select --switch /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

Install nvm

nvm is Node Version Manager. You can simply use multiple node versions without having any problems.

More information and documentation please visit: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm

Install:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.0/install.sh | bash

To verify that nvm has been installed, do:

command -v nvm

which should output nvm if the installation was successful. Otherwise add the source lines from the snippet below to your profile (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).

export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

_{Note: If the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is present, it will place the nvm files there.}

Install node:

nvm install [desired_node_version]
nvm use [desired_node_version]

_{In my case I use latest LTS version which is 12.13.0 when this article was written. You can pick different versions.}

i.e For prebid builds I had to use 11.6.0 https://github.com/prebid/Prebid.js/issues/3878#issuecomment-517941800

Install yarn

The simplest step:

brew install yarn

Give it a try

Go to your project folder. Pick your node version with

nvm use [desired_and_installed_node_verison]

and

yarn install

or whatever command you were using before.

References:

• https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/1927
• https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/1779
• https://github.com/prebid/Prebid.js/issues/3878