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.