I cannot code with my Terminal in 32 Bit thanx to Rosetta 2

The arch command output has been a source of confusion for many years.

Bash: arch command for OS X - Apple Community

Homebrew can sometimes cause issues, as can a bad PATH, as can other issues.

Rosetta 2 is pretty benign, and only gets involved when there’s no AArch64 code included in a Universal 2 executable image, just x86-64 64-bit code. And more importantly, only when trying to run that x86-64code on Apple silicon.

Rosetta 2 supports x86-64 64-bit code and does not support 32-bit x86 code.

Some related commands:

uname
sw_vers
sysctl machdep.cpu.brand_string
machine

The uname command is part of the UNIX spec. The arch command is not, nor is sw_vers or machine; those are platform-specific and potentially (or actually) non-portable.

So…. What is happening here, beyond the arch command?

Servant of Cats wrote:

MrHoffman wrote:

Rosetta 2 is pretty benign, and only gets involved when there’s no AArch64 code included in a Universal 2 executable image, just x86-64 64-bit code.

Or if you are on an Apple Silicon Mac, and tick off the "Open using Rosetta" checkbox in a Universal application's "Get Info" dialog. Sometimes Apple Silicon users will force an application to run under Rosetta 2 translation so as to allow use of Intel-only plug-ins.

And more importantly, only when trying to run that x86-64code on Apple silicon.

Or when running Intel binaries on Apple silicon under the Virtualization Framework, if I were getting yet deeper into the weeds:

• Running Intel Binaries in Linux VMs with Rosetta | Apple Developer Documentation

😉

None of which is applicable to running x86-64 binaries on an x86-64 Mac running x86-64 macOS, though.

the arch command always returns i386 on Macs. If you want to confirm your architecture:

uname -m

Are you actually having an issue besides seeing i386 as the result of running arch? Is something actually not working? I assure you that the entire macOS system and its applications (including Terminal and all the shells) are 64-bit programs running on a 64-bit x86_64 architecture.

Fun fact - run the command machine, and the result is

i486

on my 2012 i7-3280QM

MrHoffman wrote:

Rosetta 2 is pretty benign, and only gets involved when there’s no AArch64 code included in a Universal 2 executable image, just x86-64 64-bit code.

Or if you are on an Apple Silicon Mac, and tick off the "Open using Rosetta" checkbox in a Universal application's "Get Info" dialog. Sometimes Apple Silicon users will force an application to run under Rosetta 2 translation so as to allow use of Intel-only plug-ins.

And more importantly, only when trying to run that x86-64code on Apple silicon.

Rosetta 2 only runs on Apple Silicon Macs. It is not present on Intel-based ones, and so I don't know why you think you need to "uninstall" it from your Intel-based Mac.

As far as 32-bit applications go, Catalina and above do not support them. They only support 64-bit applications, whether you are talking about an Intel-based Mac, or an Apple-Silicon-based one.