Too advanced
tl;dr: if you have issues and can’t update, you can install the libffi7 package as a temporary workaround
After a recent Arch update, python packages / applications using ctypes, such as yt-dlp, were throwing an error:
ImportError: libffi.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
or more fully:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/robert/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 197, in _run_module_as_main
return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,
File "/home/robert/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 87, in _run_code
exec(code, run_globals)
File "/home/robert/ytdlp/__main__.py", line 16, in <module>
File "<frozen zipimport>", line 259, in load_module
File "/home/robert/ytdlp/yt_dlp/__init__.py", line 16, in <module>
File "<frozen zipimport>", line 259, in load_module
File "/home/robert/ytdlp/yt_dlp/options.py", line 8, in <module>
File "<frozen zipimport>", line 259, in load_module
File "/home/robert/ytdlp/yt_dlp/compat.py", line 5, in <module>
File "/home/robert/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/ctypes/__init__.py", line 8, in <module>
from _ctypes import Union, Structure, Array
ImportError: libffi.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
(you may notice a reference to pyenv in there!)
It seems there’s been an update to libffi, which has caused a corresponding bump in the library file number. Unfortunately, the latest (at time of writing) version/release of ctypes / yt-dlp hasn’t bumped the reference.
Fortunately, there’s a libffi7 package, which can be installed (from AUR) as a temporary workaround until other packages are updated.