Answering my own question in a hope to help others who are having similar problems. (and until a good answer is added from another user)
I found out that GoogleWebRTC actually requires its source to be compiled with x64 based on its source depo.
For builds targeting iOS devices, this should be set to either “arm” or “arm64”, depending on the architecture of the device. For builds to run in the simulator, this should be set to “x64”.
https://webrtc.github.io/webrtc-org/native-code/ios/
This must be why I was getting the following error.
building for iOS Simulator, but linking in dylib built for iOS, file '/Users/andy/workspace/app/Pods/GoogleWebRTC/Frameworks/frameworks/WebRTC.framework/WebRTC' for architecture arm64
Please correct me if I am wrong, but by default, it seems that Xcode running in Apple M1 silicon seems to launch iOS simulator with arm arch type. Since my app did run fine on simulators in Intel Mac, I did the following as a workaround for now.
- Quit Xcode.
- Go to Finder and open Application Folder.
- Right click on Xcode application, select
Get Info - In the “Xcode Info Window” check on
Open using Rosetta. - Open Xcode and try running again.
That was all I needed to do to make my app, which relies on a library that is not yet fully supported on arm simulator, work again. (I believe launching Xcode in Rosetta mode runs simulator in x86 as well..?? which explains why things are working after making the above change)
A lot of online sources (often posted before M1 Mac launch on Nov/2020) talks about “add arm64 to Excluded Architectures“, but that solution seems to be only applicable to Intel Mac, and not M1 Mac, as I did not need to make that change to make things work again.
Of course, running Xcode in Rosetta mode is not a permanent solution, and Xcode slows down lil bit, but it is an interim solution that gets things going in case one of libraries that you are using is not runnable in arm64 simulator.. yet.