How do I resolve #error: architecture not supported during pip install psutil?

Question

I've run into some problems while trying to download packages with pip. Namely, when I run

pip install "dask[complete]"

on MacOS Catalina 10.15.7. Specifically, the package that throws this error is psutil.

I run into an #error: architecture not supported message. I believe this is because the installer is looking for the MacOS 10.14.6 SDKs, but I am on 10.15.7. One user on this post stated that installing a new Python 3 fixed the issue. Maybe this is because the newer Python comes with a cached version of the package that uses the MacOS 10.15.7 SDKs.

I'm guessing that there might be two solutions to this issue:

1. Download a non-cached version of psutil, which might be compatible with the version of Python I'm using as well as MacOS Catalina.
2. Download a newer version of Python 3, namely 3.8.5+, and replace the Xcode Python 3 with this version, enabling me to stay up-to-date with current Python and packages.

I'm wary of the second method because of any possible dependencies I will lose while updating, and I've also been made very aware through research that generally speaking, you don't want to mess with system Python installations.

I'm not opposed to being walked through the first solution, if it would indeed solve the problem, but am very curious about the second solution, again, if it is possible. If neither approach would work out as intended, has anyone encountered this issue and resolved it without using a fresh, SEPARATE install of Python? I don't really want to start messing with virtual environments, but if I must, I supposed I will just download PyCharm and restart there.

EDIT: After continuing to try to work around the issue, I've been led to believe that it is not being caused by an outdated version of psutil; could it be an outdated version of setup.py? In this case, would it indeed be an issue with an old Python version? I'm very new to configuring Python in depth like this, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Try setting the environment variable ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" so Xcode 12 doesn't try to build an ARM64 universal binary. It worked for me on a different python package that had the same error.

ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" pip install "dask[complete]"

(Thanks to Keith Smiley's comment at on Bitbucket for pointing this out.)