Tutorial Released To Install RMagick Gem on Windows (ImageMagick Installation Guide)

CHESTER, U.K. - Nov. 16, 2016 - PRLog -- If developing Ruby on Rails on Windows, you'll encounter many instances where you will be unable to install gems / other dependencies. Most notably, the RMagick gem often has installation issues, caused by your system's lack of ImageMagick "C header" files. This problem exists on other OS's such as Linux and Mac OS - the difference is Windows requires you download the files independently.

A new tutorial has been released explaining how to resolve the issues you may encounter when installing RMagick on Windows. Specifically, it mentions that in order to make the gem work, you need to download a compatible version of ImageMagick (free) and then ensure you're able to reference it when you install the gem on your PC.

The tutorial suggests that you download a 6.x.x version of ImageMagick. This allows you to specifically identify the files that you need to install - referencing them when you run the RMagick installation process. The good news is that since installing ImageMagick and referencing it are actually quite similar, you'll be able to use the simple steps in the tutorial to get it installed.

Once you have downloaded an appropriate version of ImageMagick, you need to get it installed. You need to ensure you have the DLL version, as this allows you to install the application with the appropriate "C Header" files. This is a reference to the C++ programming language, from which RMagick draws to get its files working. This is the core of why most people are unable to get RMagick working on Windows.

Installing ImageMagick with the appropriate options checked (C Headers and adding it to PATH) will allow you to attempt to install the RMagick gem again. This can be done by referencing the ImageMagick installation directory you just created (more info in the tutorial itself). If you reference the correct files for ImageMagick, and then let Ruby install RMagick, it should install the entire gem. This will take some time as it will be compiling several dependency files to make it work. If successful, you should be able to use RMagick within your Rails app.

You can see how to install the RMagick gem on Windows here:
https://medium.com/@frontlineutils/install-rmagick-gem-on...