`:observer.start` crashes Erlang VM

How did you install Erlang? I installed it both through homebrew and then through asdf and both worked just fine out of the box.

Can you post the output of brew info erlang? Maybe wxmac wasn’t installed (or errored out on install)?

If you use darkmode I’d also suggest:
https://www.dairon.org/2020/09/27/fix-erlang-observer-osx-dark-mode.html

That looks exhausting to do. I am guessing there’s no way to achieve the same with some sort of a kerl flag passed to it through asdf?

It’s basically editing one file with a handful of changes, so brew installs the recent development version of wxwidgets. After that you can build erlang however you want (not sure if rebuilding is required however).

here’s the output of brew info:

$ brew info erlang
erlang: stable 23.2.1 (bottled), HEAD
Programming language for highly scalable real-time systems
https://www.erlang.org/
/usr/local/Cellar/erlang/23.2.1 (7,978 files, 460.7MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2021-01-15 at 11:31:21
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/erlang.rb
License: Apache-2.0
==> Dependencies
Build: autoconf ✔, automake ✘, libtool ✘
Required: openssl@1.1 ✔, wxmac ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
        Install HEAD version
==> Caveats
Man pages can be found in:
  /usr/local/opt/erlang/lib/erlang/man

Access them with `erl -man`, or add this directory to MANPATH.
==> Analytics
install: 30,248 (30 days), 96,829 (90 days), 358,251 (365 days)
install-on-request: 14,875 (30 days), 43,588 (90 days), 117,420 (365 days)
build-error: 0 (30 days)

I can see the wxmac package was installed as a dependency when I erlang was installed. Are you running on the same version of OS as me? That’s strange.

btw… thanks for helping to look into it.

I’m not really using dark mode. But thanks for sharing the article. I came across that one on my searches.

Hi @albiere, I have the same problem you have, also on BigSur

@rodrigues Were you able to test whether this error occurs on Catalina as well?

No, I didn’t. I have another mac in BigSur with no wxmac problems

The system seems confused for conflicting dylibs, but also doesn’t work without installing wxmac. Gotta still crack this…

I’ve met the same problem in below environment:

macOS Big Sur version 11.1

$ brew info erlang
erlang: stable 23.2.2 (bottled), HEAD
Programming language for highly scalable real-time systems
https://www.erlang.org/
/usr/local/Cellar/erlang/23.2.1 (7,978 files, 460.7MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2021-01-14 at 00:25:29
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/erlang.rb
License: Apache-2.0
==> Dependencies
Build: autoconf ✘, automake ✘, libtool ✔
Required: openssl@1.1 ✔, wxmac ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
        Install HEAD version
==> Caveats
Man pages can be found in:
  /usr/local/opt/erlang/lib/erlang/man

Access them with `erl -man`, or add this directory to MANPATH.
==> Analytics
install: 29,723 (30 days), 97,041 (90 days), 357,716 (365 days)
install-on-request: 14,520 (30 days), 43,683 (90 days), 117,476 (365 days)
build-error: 0 (30 days)

$ brew info wxmac
wxmac: stable 3.0.5.1 (bottled), HEAD
Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit (wxWidgets for macOS)
https://www.wxwidgets.org
/usr/local/Cellar/wxmac/3.0.5.1_1 (810 files, 52.2MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2021-01-14 at 00:25:13
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/wxmac.rb
License: wxWindows
==> Dependencies
Required: jpeg ✔, libpng ✔, libtiff ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
        Install HEAD version
==> Analytics
install: 12,204 (30 days), 44,651 (90 days), 213,507 (365 days)
install-on-request: 1,821 (30 days), 5,313 (90 days), 23,234 (365 days)
build-error: 0 (30 days)