ffmpeg upgrade fails due to nettle no longer compatible with highSierra

Question

I use HighSierra 10.13.6 on my Mac.

When trying to upgrade youtube-dl, the process also tries to update ffmpeg which fails because of a library called "nettle". As a result of this, ffmpeg was removed from my macOS and I cannot install it again.

Is this library important to "normal" use of ffmpeg? Where normal means converting downloaded videos from YouTube and/or between formats such as mp4, mp3.

Is there a way to pass options to homebrew to tell not to use this nettle library?

If not possible, is there a way to tell homebrew that for ffmpeg library use a locally built nettle installation directory?

Answer 1

As other answers have noted, Homebrew no longer supports High Sierra.

While I suspect you will eventually want to switch to MacPorts, you could also download a static build of ffmpeg from https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/ and drop it in /usr/local/bin. These self-contained "static" binaries include all of the library code they need to run.

Answer 2

Homebrew release notes for 2.6.0 say that High Sierra is unsupported.

If you are stuck on old versions of OSX then I would look at Macports which does provide ports for many cases going back to Tiger. nettle and ffmpeg seem to have a built version available for Leopard to BigSur. Although I would note that due to all the possible variants of ffmpeg (all the different libraries it can use) Macports might have to compile that or your machine.