Installing qiskit-metal on a M1 Mac (Apple Silicon)

install_qiskit_metal_m1_mac.md

There was no one resource avaiable online that walks through the process of installing qiskit-metal on a M1 Mac (Apple Silicon).

Hoping this helps others.

1. Create a fresh conda environment with python 3.10 or 3.11 and configure it to emulate x86

CONDA_SUBDIR=osx-64 conda create -n <env_name> python=3.11
conda activate <env_name>
conda config --env --set subdir osx-64

2. Clone the qiskit metal repo

   $ git clone https://github.com/Qiskit/qiskit-metal.git
   

3.. Go into the repo to update your conda environment and then install qiskit metal

	$ cd qiskit-metal
	$ conda env update -n <env_name> environment.yml
	$ python -m pip install --no-deps -e .

Resources:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70205633/cannot-install-python-3-7-on-osx-arm64
• https://qiskit.org/documentation/metal/installation.html

The metal repo is now using minimum of python 3.9.