Symbol not found: _ldap_init_fd points to a new feature that was introduced a couple of weeks ago. What's your OpenLDAP libdap version? Are you using libldap from homebrew or from macOS?

I am using the MacOS system libldap. According to the man page, it is OpenLDAP 2.4.28.

Thanks for the information, PR #360 should fix the problem.

@encukou can you do a 3.3.1 release on Monday?

until merge, using python-ldap==3.2.0 is the workaround

I recommend to use python-ldap!=3.3.0 instead. The requirements blocks 3.3.0 and install 3.2.0 for now. It will pick up 3.3.1 as soon as the fix is released.

This should be fixed in the fresh python-ldap 3.3.1.
Thank you for your patience!

Even though this should be fixed, I run into the same error on my MBP with Big Sur and homebrew LDAP libs (2.5.8):

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/...path.../18-gcvs-conversion.py", line 8, in <module>
    import ldap,ldif
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/ldap/__init__.py", line 34, in <module>
    import _ldap
ImportError: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/_ldap.cpython-39-darwin.so, 2): Symbol not found: _ldap_init_fd
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/_ldap.cpython-39-darwin.so
  Expected in: flat namespace
 in /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/_ldap.cpython-39-darwin.so

This is still an issue for MBP Monterey 12.3.1 (21E258)

Tried with both python-ldap version 3.4.0 and 3.3.1
openldap version 2.6.1
python version 3.9.12

    import _ldap
ImportError: dlopen(/path/to/virtualenvs/myvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/_ldap.cpython-39-darwin.so, 0x0002): symbol not found in flat namespace '_ldap_init_fd'

python-ldap was installed using

LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openldap/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openldap/include" pip install python-ldap --global-option=build_ext --global-option="-I$(xcrun --show-sdk-path)/usr/include/sasl"

Are you sure you're linking against your own libldap? To me it looks like you're still linking against the system version at runtime (no rpath). You should be able to use ldd on the .so file to check this.

I think that's why I include LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS when running pip install.
if I do brew info openldap
Part of it's output is

For compilers to find openldap you may need to set:
  export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openldap/lib"
  export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openldap/include"

When I don't include these while installing python-ldap. After it's installed and I try to use python-ldap, I get an error about ldap.OPT_X_TLS_CACERTFILE throwing ValueError: option error when I try to set it.

However, I could be misunderstanding something.
ldd isn't on macos, but using otool -L it prints shared libraries being used.

> otool -L /path/to/virtualenvs/myvenv//lib/python3.9/site-packages/_ldap.cpython-39-darwin.so
/path/to/virtualenvs/myvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/_ldap.cpython-39-darwin.so:
	/System/Library/Frameworks/LDAP.framework/Versions/A/LDAP (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 2.4.0)
	/usr/local/opt/openldap/lib/liblber.2.dylib (compatibility version 3.0.0, current version 3.200.0)
	/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1311.100.3)

Edit:
I'm thinking you're right. My openldap gets added but because that system library shows up before openldap, it's the first to get used. I don't know enough about ld to know how to try and tell it to exclude specific system libraries or search dirs. Based on what I'm reading in the manpages I'm not even sure I can do that. Thanks for the feed back, I guess this isn't the same issue and more a building issue. I'll look into building it manually rather than using pip.

I'll look into building it manually rather than using pip.

Any luck on that?