macos-latest fails due to precision issue

[abhisrkckl]

#1695 and #1741 are affected at least.

The error I'm seeing is

ImportError while loading conftest '/Users/runner/work/PINT/PINT/conftest.py'.
conftest.py:49: in
pint.utils.require_longdouble_precision()
.tox/py312-test/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pint/utils.py:156: in require_longdouble_precision
raise PINTPrecisionError(
E pint.utils.PINTPrecisionError: PINT needs higher precision floating point than you have available. PINT uses the numpy longdouble type to represent modified Julian days, and this machine does not have sufficient numerical precision to represent sub-microsecond times with np.longdouble. On an M1 Mac you will need to use a Rosetta environment, or on a Windows machine you will need to us a different Python interpreter. Some PINT operations can work with reduced precision, but you have requested one that cannot.

This has nothing to do with the PR contents.

[dlakaplan]

OK, sounds like GitHub changed their macOS build environment. I think the newest OSs only are supported for M?, so this might make sense. Sounds like migration is happening now (github/roadmap#926).

I guess options would be:

• pin the run to a version that is Intel (maybe macOS-12)
• try to find a way to use something like rosetta on the macOS-latest runners (so far I don't see that in google results)
• drop the macOS runner entirely

[abhisrkckl]

Perhaps this is useful: https://github.com/grahampugh/Rosetta-2-install

[dlakaplan]

#1745 implements one of the possibilities above, and seems to avoid the error. Not sure if that's the right answer but we could do it temporarily if needed.

[dlakaplan]

I'm going to mark this as tabled: I don't think we have a general solution, but we have something that will allow CI to proceed.