'GFortran error: ld: library not found for -lSystem when trying to compile

I am getting a strange error when trying to compile a simple fortran-90 file using gfortran. I am working on a macOS mojave system. I have gfortran 8.2.0 installed and I checked to be sure of this by doing the following:

Input: gfortran --version
Output: GNU Fortran (GCC) 8.2.0
Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A 
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Which indicates that gfortran installed correctly and I also confirmed this by typing simply: gfortran, into the terminal, which returns:

gfortran: fatal error: no input files
compilation terminated.

However, when I try to compile my file like so:

gfortran hello.f90 -o hello.x

I get an error which reads:

ld: library not found for -lSystem
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

I've tried compiling in different ways and I also tried setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH in .bash_profile as described by https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranBinaries32Linux but I still get the same error. The gfortran directory has the pathname: /usr/local/gfortran, however another gfortran which is not a directory can be found in /usr/local/bin

Typing:

which gfortran

Outputs:

/usr/local/bin/gfortran

And a long list search of this directory:

Input: ls -l /usr/local/bin/gfortran
Output: lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  32 15 May 14:07 
/usr/local/bin/gfortran -> /usr/local/gfortran/bin/gfortran

How can I fix this where everything seems to be correctly installed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Solution 1:^[1]

I had the same problem, but installing gfortran build from the gcc package using homebrew did not help. Instead, I installed the whole gcc using homebrew:

brew install gcc

and that solved the problem.

Solution 2:^[2]

On macOS Big Sur v11.1:

Relevant SO post: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/408999/gfortran-compiler-error-on-mac-os-big-sur

The fix is to add the stdlib to your $LIBRARY_PATH. For some reason or another it isn't in your standard $PATH anymore on 11.1.

export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"

(or add it to login file and restart terminal).

Solution 3:^[3]

I'll also chime in (19 Dec 2020) that I just updated from MacOS Mojave to Catalina and suddenly got this error.

It resolved itself with

brew reinstall gcc
brew reinstall gfortran

Solution 4:^[4]

I added this to my ~/.profile:

export SDKROOT=$(xcrun --sdk macosx --show-sdk-path)
export LIBRARY_PATH="$SDKROOT/usr/lib"

And it works.

Solution 5:^[5]

Update: I tried what was suggested and installed the gfortran build from the gcc package using homebrew which gave me a newer version of gfortran and my problem was fixed!

Solution 6:^[6]

For those using MacPorts.

# Installed `gcc8` and `gcc_select`
sudo port install gcc_select gcc8

# then to create "gfortran" softlink to "gfortran-mp-8"
sudo port select --set gcc gcc8

# and added to my .profile
export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"

I did ls -l /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/ and found that Xcode had installed one SDK for Catalina and one for Big Sur. I changed the soft link for MacOSX.sdk to point to the Catalina version.

Solution 7:^[7]

Just placed this line at the end of .zshrc:

export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"

and ran my Fortran code again to compile – success! The issue with -lSystem has been solved in my macOS system.

Solution 8:^[8]

I recently had this

ld: library not found for -lSystem

problem after upgrading Mac OS from v10 to v11 (Big Sur). I am using Xcode 12.3 and I used brew install gcc to install gfortran 10.2.0. I still saw the error after trying brew reinstall gcc. I was able to solve the problem using:

brew install gfortran

but I do not know why this works.

Solution 9:^[9]

I had this problem, and I'd tried lots of thing to solve the problem, but only using these "both" commands solved it:

brew reinstall gcc
brew reinstall gfortran

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	oxydentist
Solution 2
Solution 3	Brian
Solution 4	yegor256
Solution 5	datasplice
Solution 6	saherr1969
Solution 7	Wadek
Solution 8	Mead
Solution 9	kamyar mohseni

'GFortran error: ld: library not found for -lSystem when trying to compile

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