We are currently beta testing Image Magick 6.3 packages for our Ubuntu Dapper Brightboxes. These packages provide ImageMagick 6.3.7 02/22/08 Q16.
Feel free to send testing feedback to the help desk.
Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://apt.brightbox.net/ dapper testing
If you're not on a Brightbox, you'll need to import our apt repository key:
wget http://apt.brightbox.net/release.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -
Then upgrade:
sudo apt-get update apt-get install libmagick9-dev imagemagick
Confirm yes to installing the massive list of packages that is shown (they are all standard Dapper packages). Then install the new rmagick gem:
sudo gem install rmagick
The rmagick gem doesn't have a test suite, but you can run some of the examples to ensure it's working ok:
cd /tmp ruby -rrubygems /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-2.2.2/examples/spinner.rb ruby -rrubygems /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-2.2.2/examples/rotating_text.rb ruby -rrubygems /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-2.2.2/examples/identify.rb /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-2.2.2/doc/ex/images/Violin.jpg
There are other packages in the testing repository which you may not want to install, so ensure you remove the line you added to /etc/apt/sources.conf.