Syso files on macOS

Problem

When trying to build a Wails application on macOS, the build fails with an error similar to the following:

Error: Users/runner/go/pkg/mod/golang.org/toolchain@v0.0.1-go1.23.1.darwin-arm64/pkg/tool/darwin_arm64/link: running clang failed: exit status 1
ld: unknown file type in '/private/var/folders/ml/x_tvfgn50_s7p67dm1ypcqqm0000gn/T/go-link-774134794/000000.o'
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

Why is this happening?

When building for Windows, Wails will generate .syso files for the application icon, window icon, and menu icon. These files are required for the application to build on Windows. These .syso files can be found in the project’s root directory and can cause issues when building for macOS.

Solution

To fix this issue, you can remove the syso files from the project’s root directory or if you are generating them yourself, name them wails_windows_<arch>.syso e.g. wails_windows_arm64.syso.