[Bug]: x86 electron cannot be installed on an M1 Mac

[theicfire]

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a feature request that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Electron Version

15.3.3

What operating system are you using?

macOS

Operating System Version

12.0.1

What arch are you using?

arm64 (including Apple Silicon)

Last Known Working Electron version

14.2.2

Expected Behavior

• Run arch -x86_64 /bin/bash
• Run npm install --arch=x64 electron@15.3
• Run file node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron

You'll notice the arm64 version was installed, but I expected the x86 version to be installed.

Actual Behavior

The arm64 version was installed.

Testcase Gist URL

No response

Additional Information

This worked fine in 14.2.2:

• Run npm install --arch=x64 electron@14.2.2
• Run file node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron

A workaround that helped me:

rm -rf /tmp/fake_sysctl
mkdir /tmp/fake_sysctl
echo "echo 0" >> /tmp/fake_sysctl/sysctl_always_x86
ln -s /tmp/fake_sysctl/sysctl_always_x86 /tmp/fake_sysctl/sysctl
chmod a+x /tmp/fake_sysctl/sysctl
PATH=/tmp/fake_sysctl/:$PATH

This was inspired by noticing this PR: #29953

I believe that it is that PR that caused the regression. I'm trying to get this script to output "0" and it doesn't seem to matter if I'm running in rosetta mode or not:

// Try running with arch -x86_64 node test.js, and you'll still see "1" on the output
const childProcess = require('child_process');
const output = childProcess.execSync('sysctl -in sysctl.proc_translated');
console.log(output.toString());

[poiru]

This was just fixed by #32266.