# Failing to precompile Plots due to LoadError (Mac edition)

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/failing-to-precompile-plots-due-to-loaderror-mac-edition/87911>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [September 28, 2022, 9:44am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/failing-to-precompile-plots-due-to-loaderror-mac-edition/87911 "2022-09-28T09:44:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![giordano](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/giordano/32/2166_2.png) [@giordano](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/giordano)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 10:13am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/failing-to-precompile-plots-due-to-loaderror-mac-edition/87911/2 "2022-09-28T10:13:15Z")

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Unfortunately that’s a very unhelpful error message coming from your operating system (julia has no control whatsoever over that). I’d note that macOS 12 provides more descriptive error messages when you aren’t able to load a shared library, but older versions are very economic with details.

> [@jeffzwe](#):
>
> Any ideas?

I’d have suggested to do something like

> [@Failing to precompile Plots due to LoadError](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/failing-to-precompile-plots-due-to-loaderror/77232/6):
>
> Try this: ]add https://github.com/giordano/DependencyWalker.jl using Plots # this will result in an error, it's ok using DependencyWalker Library(raw"C:\Users\frpa8185\.julia\artifacts\ecb81e6429c089c1da802644fae337754832d534\bin\avcodec-58.dll") The last command should show which library can’t be found.

using

```julia
Library("/Users/jeffreyzweidler/.julia/artifacts/c759795325eba6523fb1157b582551d4250575e1/lib/libavdevice.58.13.100.dylib")

```

as last line, but honestly I never used `DependencyWalker` on macOS and I don’t know if it’ll work (especially with frameworks involved). You can give it a try, but don’t expect too much. _ **NOTE** _: to be absolutely crystal clear, since this is a somewhat common misconception, `DependencyWalker` is a _ **debugging tool** _, it _may_ be able to tell you what’s the missing library, it will _ **not** _ solve any issue.

If `DependencyWalker` doesn’t help, you’ll have to start julia with `dtrace`, try to run `using Plots` and have a look at `dtrace` output to see what library can’t be found.

Again, there is is relatively little we can do about this, it’s your operating system that is withholding information from you.

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