Binary Code

Installing ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick and RMagick under OS X today has embodied almost everything I dislike about modern computing. After five hours of effort, following the various instructions on fourteen different web pages (thank god for browser tabs) and edit upon edit of arcane command line arguments, I give up. I conceed that they will not be installed, will not be operable.

Even though I’m absolutely comfortable in the command line, regularly have a number of terminal windows open, happily ssh into my various Linux boxes from my OS X laptop, it boggles my mind that I can install entire OS updates with a click of a button without interrupting my workflow yet stand-alone Linux-based apps seemingly cannot be installed without extracting a gallon of fresh blood.

After all this effort I’m left with no answers and a mash of:

/Users/chris/Documents/Downloads/RMagick-1.15.4/./lib/rvg/misc.rb:321: [BUG] Bus Error
ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [powerpc-darwin8.8.0]
…
post-setup.rb: InitialCoords.rb example returned error code 6
…
post-setup.rb: RotateScale.rb example returned error code 6
setup.rb: Too many examples failed. The RMagick documentation cannot be installed successfully. Consult the README.txt file and try again, or send email to rmagick@rubyforge.org.
make: *** [all] Error 1
…
—> ext/RMagick
no ruby extention exists: ‘ruby setup.rb setup’ first
Try ‘ruby setup.rb –help’ for detailed usage.

Thanks for the info, the bus error, the error code 6, the Error 1. That’s all extremely fascinating and absolutely useless.

Yeah, I could keep googling, open another half dozen web pages, waste a couple more hours but I won’t. I quit. Dealing with non-essential software at this level is simply just too massive a waste of time, and today is one of the rare days when the sun is shining.

Screw you *Magick, I don’t really need you anyhow.

UPDATE: A pizza, a few pints and some distance later and *Magick is defeated instead. Solution: remove everything carefully. Forget every other link except this one: Really Truly Getting ImageMagick & RMagick Working on OSX from Source without Using MacPorts(DarwinPorts) or Fink. Download that shell script and run it. That oughta’ do it.

Thank you LabRatz.