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macoshomebrewapple-m1

Migrate home-brew back from M1 to Intel

I needed to migrate back from a M1 MacBook to an Intel one again. Yes I do not like it either but that is my challenge. I used build in the Migration Assistant from Apple to copy over all relevant files and settings. Home-brew folder exists on contains the old M1 installation.

Now every time I try to do anything I get the following error:

Error: Cannot install on Intel processor in ARM default prefix (/opt/homebrew)! 
Error: 'git' must be installed and in your PATH!

Trying to install git also does not work:

xxxxx@xxxxx:~$ brew install git
git 2.33.1 is already installed but outdated
Error: Cannot install on Intel processor in ARM default prefix (/opt/homebrew)!
Error: 'git' must be installed and in your PATH!
git 2.33.1 is already installed but outdated
Error: Cannot install on Intel processor in ARM default prefix (/opt/homebrew)!

brew doctor also didn't help.

Solution

  • If you still have access to the M1 Mac:

    1. On the M1 Mac, run brew bundle dump and copy the resulting Brewfile to your Intel Mac
    2. On the Intel Mac
      • Remove /opt/homebrew
      • Install brew using the instructions on brew.sh
      • Run brew bundle install --file /path/to/Brewfile to reinstall packages

    If you don't have access to your M1 Mac any longer, run ls /opt/homebrew/Cellar on the new Mac to get a list of installed packages, followed by step 2.1 and 2.2 from above. Then manually install the packages again.