openai-whisper: pytorch built against protobuf 33.5 but protobuf 34.0 is installed

[avatasia]

brew config AND brew doctor output OR brew gist-logs <formula> link

brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 5.1.0
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 4135badeddc3899aa2e89d3ea1caee320c55d299
Last commit: 21 hours ago
Branch: stable
Core tap JSON: 12 Mar 14:32 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_DISPLAY: localhost:12.0
HOMEBREW_DOWNLOAD_CONCURRENCY: 4
HOMEBREW_FORBID_PACKAGES_FROM_PATHS: set
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 2
Homebrew Ruby: 4.0.1 => /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/4.0.1/bin/ruby
CPU: dual-core 64-bit haswell
Clang: N/A
Git: 2.47.3 => /bin/git
Curl: 8.14.1 => /bin/curl
Kernel: Linux 6.12.73+deb13-amd64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) (trixie)
Host glibc: 2.41
Host libstdc++: 6.0.33
/usr/bin/gcc: 14.2.0
/usr/bin/ruby: N/A
glibc: N/A
gcc@12: N/A
gcc: 15.2.0_1
xorg: N/A

brew doctor
Your system is ready to brew.
openclaw@debianClaw:~/.openclaw$ whisper

Verification

• My brew doctor output says Your system is ready to brew. and am still able to reproduce my issue.
• I ran brew update and am still able to reproduce my issue.
• I have resolved all warnings from brew doctor and that did not fix my problem.
• I searched for recent similar issues at https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues?q=is%3Aissue and found no duplicates.
• My issue is not about a failure to build a formula from source.

What were you trying to do (and why)?

I installed openai-whisper via brew and tried to run the whisper command
to transcribe audio files.

What happened (include all command output)?

Running whisper fails with:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/whisper", line 3, in
from whisper.transcribe import cli
...
File ".../torch/init.py", line 431, in
from torch._C import *
ImportError: libprotobuf.so.33.5.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Confirmed via ldd that libtorch_python.so requires libprotobuf.so.33.5.0,
but brew has protobuf 34.0 installed. The two versions are ABI-incompatible —
symlinking 34.0 → 33.5.0 results in an undefined symbol error:

undefined symbol: _ZN6google8protobuf8internal20RepeatedPtrFieldBase7ReserveEiPNS0_5ArenaE

What did you expect to happen?

whisper should run successfully after installation with no manual library
patching required.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions (by running brew commands)

brew install openai-whisper
whisper

[cho-m]

What does brew info pytorch show?

Can only guess without further information, but pytorch may be outdated on your machine.

In theory, Homebrew should have automatically installed a rebuilt copy of pytorch when upgrading protobuf to 34, but it is possible there is an issue handling this.

---

EDIT: Another possibility is an issue with alias-to-formula migration. If pytorch shows a dependency on protobuf@33 can you check what is realpath, e.g.

$ realpath /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf@33
/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/protobuf@33/33.5

---

I can't reproduce error on a newly spun-up Linux container, so a brew upgrade pytorch or brew reinstall pytorch will likely fix it.

[avatasia]

brew info pytorch
==> pytorch ✔: stable 2.10.0 (bottled)
Tensors and dynamic neural networks
https://pytorch.org/
Installed
/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/pytorch/2.10.0_1 (14,608 files, 402.2MB) *
  Poured from bottle using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2026-03-12 at 22:01:43
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/p/pytorch.rb
License: BSD-3-Clause
==> Dependencies
Build: cmake ✘, ninja ✘, python@3.14 ✔
Required: abseil ✔, eigen ✔, libuv ✔, libyaml ✔, numpy ✔, onnx ✔, openblas ✔, protobuf ✔, sleef ✔
==> Requirements
Build: Xcode (on macOS) ✔
Required: macOS >= 12 (or Linux) ✔
==> Downloading https://formulae.brew.sh/api/formula/pytorch.json
==> Analytics
install: 14,855 (30 days), 34,854 (90 days), 56,114 (365 days)
install-on-request: 1,492 (30 days), 5,205 (90 days), 19,999 (365 days)
build-error: 44 (30 days)

openclaw@debianClaw:~$ realpath /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf@33
/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf@33
openclaw@debianClaw:~$ ls -la /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/proto*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 openclaw openclaw 23 Mar 12 22:01 /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf -> ../Cellar/protobuf/34.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 openclaw openclaw 23 Mar 12 22:01 /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf@34 -> ../Cellar/protobuf/34.0

My version here shows 34, not 33. This is a brand new machine with a fresh Homebrew installation. The CPU is older, but that shouldn't be related to the dependencies.

lscpu
Architecture:                x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):            32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:             39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:                Little Endian
CPU(s):                      2
  On-line CPU(s) list:       0,1
Vendor ID:                   GenuineIntel
  Model name:                Intel(R) Celeron(R) 2957U @ 1.40GHz
    CPU family:              6
    Model:                   69
    Thread(s) per core:      1
    Core(s) per socket:      2
    Socket(s):               1
    Stepping:                1
    CPU(s) scaling MHz:      61%
    CPU max MHz:             1400.0000
    CPU min MHz:             800.0000
    BogoMIPS:                2793.52
    Flags:                   fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfm
                             on pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt t
                             sc_deadline_timer xsave rdrand lahf_lm abm cpuid_fault epb pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust erms invpcid xsaveopt dtherm
                              arat pln pts vnmi md_clear flush_l1d
Virtualization features:     
  Virtualization:            VT-x
Caches (sum of all):         
  L1d:                       64 KiB (2 instances)
  L1i:                       64 KiB (2 instances)
  L2:                        512 KiB (2 instances)
  L3:                        2 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA:                        
  NUMA node(s):              1
  NUMA node0 CPU(s):         0,1
Vulnerabilities:             
  Gather data sampling:      Not affected
  Indirect target selection: Not affected
  Itlb multihit:             KVM: Mitigation: Split huge pages
  L1tf:                      Mitigation; PTE Inversion; VMX conditional cache flushes, SMT disabled
  Mds:                       Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT disabled
  Meltdown:                  Mitigation; PTI
  Mmio stale data:           Unknown: No mitigations
  Reg file data sampling:    Not affected
  Retbleed:                  Not affected
  Spec rstack overflow:      Not affected
  Spec store bypass:         Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:                Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Spectre v2:                Mitigation; Retpolines; IBPB conditional; IBRS_FW; STIBP disabled; RSB filling; PBRSB-eIBRS Not affected; BHI Not affected
  Srbds:                     Mitigation; Microcode
  Tsa:                       Not affected
  Tsx async abort:           Not affected
  Vmscape:                   Mitigation; IBPB before exit to userspace

[cho-m]

/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/pytorch/2.10.0_1 (14,608 files, 402.2MB) *
Poured from bottle using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2026-03-12 at 22:01:43

That bottle should have been fine with Protobuf 34.

Installing after March 11 should get you a functioning bottle built for Protobuf 34 (protobuf)

• 5469498

Installing between March 2 - 11 should get you a functioning bottle built for protobuf@33

• 3992e67

Only installs before March 2 should be broken.

---

Maybe also check

brew missing
brew linkage pytorch

Otherwise not sure. Could be something on your installation got mixed between old and new bottle.

---

Local install attempt for me shows:

$ brew info pytorch | grep Poured
  Poured from bottle using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2026-03-20 at 02:10:23

$ brew linkage pytorch | grep protobuf
  /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf/lib/libprotobuf.so.34.0.0 (protobuf)
  /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf/lib/libutf8_validity.so.34.0.0 (protobuf)

$ objdump -p $(brew --prefix pytorch)/lib/libtorch_python.so | grep 'NEEDED.*protobuf'
  NEEDED               libprotobuf.so.34.0.0

$ objdump -p $(brew --prefix pytorch)/lib/libtorch_python.so | grep RPATH | awk '{print $2}' | tr ':' '\n' | grep protobuf
/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/opt/protobuf/lib

$ whisper -h | head -2
usage: whisper [-h] [--model MODEL] [--model_dir MODEL_DIR] [--device DEVICE]
               [--output_dir OUTPUT_DIR]

[cho-m]

Going to close this as unable to reproduce.

Also PyTorch was recently upgraded to 2.11.0 (c69682e) and Protobuf to 34.1 (5391231) so a brew upgrade should resolve most issues.

If you still see same problem, please open a https://github.com/orgs/Homebrew/discussions which is where we handle non-reproducible issues. Need to find a way to create a minimal reproducible example (MRE) to continue debugging.