you know what i need this very minute? to run a m1 vm on an x86 mac. why? because there seems to be no god damn way to faithfully build m1 wheels on github's mac runners without such a contrivance. note, cibuildwheel claims it can pull off this trick but in fact it screws something up and pip install x86 dependency wheels.
The problem is probably not cibuildwheel. That having been said, the maintainers are knowledgeable and responsive, so I would try to open an issue first. Speaking from personal experience, they were able to help me to solve my problem in a couple of hours.
I opened an issue but then also plowed through the source. I'm pretty sure the issue is pip is basically intransigent and will not let you easily install packages for whatever arch it insists you have (which most certainly close to the canonical platform.machine). You end up having to chain --platform --only-binary=:all:. Okay great but I'm cross-compiling - this is exactly the time I do want source distributions.
People say it a lot but I never really felt it until I tried it - python packaging is infuriating and is beyond a shadow of a doubt proof that python is a shit professional language. Not because professional languages need to have bulletproof packaging systems (see C/C++) but because the fact that python can't make it work after so long means python is fundamentally flawed. And don't tell me "well you're implicitly talking about C extensions". Yes I am but that's a language feature and if you design a language feature that your language fundamentally precludes you from being able to support, then again that's on you.
m1 Mac:mini is about $400 used (sold by vain people). If you are worried it will come with pet hair stuck in the fan blades, pay an extra $100 to buy from a reputable reseller. If you are constrained to software or work in a chair meant for eating or sun bathing, another option is Mac Orka/Anka.
