Actually, now that I’ve re-done this a few times, I think your suggestion works, but I can’t say 100% for certain what the steps were. Something like this:

xcode-select --install # <-- just to be sure
brew uninstall wxwidgets
brew install wxwidgets 
brew link wxwidgets # <-- you might be prompted to do this
# installs to /usr/local/bin/wx-config
# Optionally set some options here...
export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--with-wx-config=/usr/local/bin/wx-config"
# OR
export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--without-wx --without-javac"
# Then
asdf install erlang 24.2.1
asdf install elixir 1.13.2-otp-24

Although there seems to be a snag with asdf here because doing iex or even elixir --version will cough up this error:

{"init terminating in do_boot",{undef,[{elixir,start_cli,[],[]},{init,start_em,1,[]},{init,do_boot,3,[]}]}}
init terminating in do_boot ({undef,[{elixir,start_cli,[],[]},{init,start_em,1,[]},{init,do_boot,3,[]}]})

But oddly, this only seems to happen if elixir and erlang versions are scoped globally. As soon as I scope them locally, everything works fine:

asdf local erlang 24.2.1
asdf local elixir 1.13.2-otp-24

I don’t know if this is because I’ve torn out so many pieces of this without rebooting or if there is a legit bug in the global bits or what.

Oh, you absolutely should install XCode, there’s no ways around that if you want anything to compile against system sources and libraries.

xcode-select --install

I tried using the KERL options but I got the same result. I don’t know enough about how the asdf install process works to know if it uses those options when it’s not a kerl-managed installation.

I also tried the trick of forcing an older version of autoconf per https://www.stevenchang.tw/blog/2021/05/25/asdf-install-erlang-failed-on-macbigsur (which has worked for me in the past), but I’m still getting the same result.

Is the GL a graphics library? Maybe for the observer? The error hasn’t given me much to go on and I’m trying to remember if I customized anything on my computer that might have had unintended side-effects…

I had a similar issue and did a write up here:

Let me know if you have any questions!

In my .bash_profile I have this alias set up:

alias kern-no-wx="export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS=\"--with-ssl=\`brew --prefix openssl@1.1\` \
                               --without-wx \
                               --disable-hipe \
                               --disable-debug \
                               --without-javac\""

This worked no problem for me!

And yes - this removes wxWidgets from compiling for Erlang. But I don’t really use that Observer anyways.
But you might, so beware that my method will skip wxWidgets, so you won’t have Observer UI.

Thanks, this was helpful – I was able to get it working like so:

export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--without-wx --without-javac"
asdf install erlang 24.2.1
asdf install elixir 1.13.2-otp-24

but it would be nice to have the observer…