rmagick gem install "Can't find Magick-config"

Question

I get the error shown below when attempting to install the rmagick gem. I am on Snowleopard 10.6 using RVM, Ruby 1.9.2-head and Rails 3.05. Responses to similar questions recommended installing ImageMagick, which I successfully did. Other suggested installing the "libmagick9-dev library", however, I can not figure out how to do this.

I'm a new developer, and any assistance or directions to an existing explanation or resource is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

jjdevenuta(opal)$ gem install rmagick
Fetching: rmagick-2.13.1.gem (100%)
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing rmagick:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/Users/jjdevenuta/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/ruby extconf.rb
checking for Ruby version >= 1.8.5... yes
checking for gcc... yes
checking for Magick-config... no
Can't install RMagick 2.13.1. Can't find Magick-config in /Users/jjdevenuta/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head@rails3/bin:/Users/jjdevenuta/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head@global/bin:/Users/jjdevenuta/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin:/Users/jjdevenuta/.rvm/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/X11/bin

*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
details.  You may need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:
    --with-opt-dir
    --without-opt-dir
    --with-opt-include
    --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
    --with-opt-lib
    --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
    --with-make-prog
    --without-make-prog
    --srcdir=.
    --curdir
    --ruby=/Users/jjdevenuta/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/ruby

UPDATE If you're a Mac/OS X user I would HIGHLY recommend using Homebrew as your package installer/manager. You can find it HERE. Since originally asking this question I have removed all my prior installs of things like rmagick and imagemagick, and reinstalled them using Homebrew. Super easy with a huge catalog of packages, and updates/uninstalls are a cinch as well!

Solution 1

When building native Ruby gems, sometimes you'll get an error containing "ruby extconf.rb". This is often caused by missing development libraries for the gem you're installing, or even Ruby itself.

Do you have apt installed on your machine? If not, I'd recommend installing it, because it's a quick and easy way to get a lot of development libraries.

If you see people suggest installing "libmagick9-dev", that's an apt package that you'd install with:

$ sudo apt-get install libmagickwand-dev imagemagick

or on centOs:

$ yum install ImageMagick-devel

On Mac OS, you can use Homebrew:

$ brew install imagemagick

Solution 2

The new correct way is to install libmagickwand-dev:

sudo apt-get install libmagickwand-dev

Then you should be able to install rmagick no problem.

Solution 3

imagemagick@6 works for me!

brew unlink imagemagick
brew install imagemagick@6 && brew link imagemagick@6 --force

See this thread

Solution 4

Ubuntu 15.10

Note that if you try to install this gem in ubuntu 15.10, then error can happened:

Can't install RMagick 2.13.1. Can't find Magick-config in ...

All you need is preload PATH variable with additional path to ImageMagick lib.

PATH="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ImageMagick-6.8.9/bin-Q16:$PATH"

then run gem install rmagick

source of solution

Solution 5

UPDATE If you're a Mac/OS X user I would HIGHLY recommend using Homebrew as your package installer/manager. You can find it HERE. Since originally asking this question I have removed all my prior installs of things like rmagick and imagemagick, and reinstalled them using Homebrew. Super easy with a huge catalog of packages, and updates/uninstalls are a cinch as well!

I finally got it working by utilizing a script for ImageMagick installation on github.

magick-installer ( https://github.com/maddox/magick-installer )

It made a fresh install of ImageMagick, and the RMagick 2.12.2 gem then installed perfectly via bundler.

Thanks to Hulihan Applications for confirming that it was most likely a missing library. I tried the suggestion of using apt-get by installing the package downloader from Fink Project. I ran the following command in terminal, but it couldn't find the libmagick9-dev libary.

$ sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev
$ Password:
$ Reading Package Lists... Done
$ Building Dependency Tree... Done
$ E: Couldn't find package libmagick9-dev

I need to bone up on my UNIX command line skills. The original copy of ImageMagick that I installed from source is still on the machine, but I don't know where exactly or how to remove it. So much to learn...!

View more solutions

Comments

[Brandon Frohbieter]

are you using fink, macports, or homebrew?

[Joe]

I have macports, but used the binary download for snow leopard on the imagemagick site. I can't find anywhere to download/install from for the libmagick9-dev.

[Jonathan]

If you update the best answer to @Travis R 's answer would be good

[jstreebin]

Brew didn't work for me so I used the magick-installer (github.com/maddox/magick-installer) and it worked perfect.

[Marcin Rudzki]

For Ubuntu ver. >= 12 Solution is in: stackoverflow.com/questions/16093006/…

[eaykin]

You can check my earlier answer to the same problem and relevant discussions at: stackoverflow.com/a/4178174/143179

[givanse]

It is a duplicate of Can't find Magick-config

[eaykin]

possible duplicate of ImageMagick / RMagick - Can't install RMagick 2.13.1. Can't find Magick-config

[Joe]

I successfully installed apt-get via the fink project as you suggested (Thanks). However, apt-can't seem to find the package. "sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done E: Couldn't find package libmagick9-dev" - I'm at a lost now.

[Govind N]

I was getting "Can't install RMagick 2.12.2. Can't find Magick-config in..." on Ubuntu 11.04. This fixed it. Thanks!

[James P McGrath]

I too was getting "Can't find Magick-config" on (Mint) Linux and installing the libmagick++-dev made the problem go away. Thanks!

[mahemoff]

I had this problem and couldn't install libmagick9-dev due to some weird depdendency issues (askubuntu.com/questions/112548/rmagick-install-problem). I was able to install RMagick in the end with apt-get install imagemagick libmagickwand-dev.

[Sean H]

THANK YOU. This was a lifesaver.

[Jonathan]

Thank you this worked for me, after installed I just ran bundle install rather than trying to do sudo gem install rmagick

[Brad Mace]

on CentOS I needed yum install ImageMagick-devel

[vinod]

Worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Thanks.

[Drew Stephens]

On Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) I used the answer that @TravisR provided, specifying the package libmagickwand-dev

[Fredrik Andersson]

I second James P McGrath for Debian 6.

[OmnipotentEntity]

Package libmagick9-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source However the following packages replace it: graphicsmagick-libmagick-dev-compat <<< Installing this package worked for me.

[jstreebin]

after hours trying every comment on the web about this, the magick-installer worked (link above) on mac!

[jstreebin]

I tried this but ultimately the magick-installer below worked for me on mac

[elboletaire]

Just installing libmagickcore-dev and libmagickwand-dev worked for me on Ubuntu 12.10. In fact, trying to install graphicsmagick-libmagick-dev-compat throws an error for me.

[wuliwong]

On Ubuntu 13.04 I also installed libmagickwand-dev to get rmagick-2.13.2 to install.

[Kelsin]

When doing this on my ubuntu 12.10 install I followed another answer and Ubuntu suggested a package that replaced libmagick9-dev. That package was not compatible. The one listed in this answer is.

[jmontross]

Please edit with sudo apt-get install libmagickwand-dev for your ubuntu instructions

[Marnen Laibow-Koser]

Fink is kind of outdated; I wouldn't recommend using it anymore. And as others have said, Homebrew is a better Mac package manager than Fink ever was.

[dhulihan]

I've removed the reference to fink in the answer.

[Tomanow]

On homebrew, you may need to run brew link --overwrite imagemagick after install.

[Sandro L]

Works on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Thank you, sir!

[Admin]

Works on Debian 7.8 as well. Thank you!

[carlosveucv]

Not only did I need libmagickwand-dev, but also imagemagick So I had to run: sudo apt-get install imagemagick libmagickwand-dev

[mltsy]

If you are working on a project with an older version of rmagick (i.e. 2.13), you may have to bundle update rmagick for it to work with the new versions of imagemagick. That is what worked for me (and if rmagick is locked at a lower version, you may have to update your Gemfile and/or app to upgrade it to a newer version) There are a few other suggestions at this thread regarding backwards compatibility issues: github.com/rmagick/rmagick/issues/201#issuecomment-106765516

[Muhammad Faisal Iqbal]

I tried this on Ubuntu 16.04 but says "libmagickwand-dev : Depends: libmagickwand-6.q16-dev but it is not going to be installed"

[Muhammad Faisal Iqbal]

tried on ubuntu 16.04 but says "libmagickcore-dev : Depends: libmagickcore-6.q16-dev but it is not going to be installed "

[Admin]

I'm also in 2017, and after days, something finally works for me.

[mayorsanmayor]

this worked for me in April 2018, and then this if experience any other problem - stackoverflow.com/a/48666276/5012862

[Kadarach]

Worked for me in 2018 as well.

[Kulgar]

And on Ubuntu 18.04 :)

[crice1988]

You saved my bacon with this one. Thanks a million!

[devjme]

2021 this is what worked for me on Big Sur!