libgd and ruby-gdchart on Mac OS X

Trials and tribulations:

Installing libgd

Use Darwinports to install GD

$ sudo port install gd2

(it seems that you need to install gd2, and not gd because otherwise the linker will complain about a function not being defined:

Arwen:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-gdchart-1.0.0/examples jcf$ ruby bar_example.rb 
dyld: NSLinkModule() error
  dyld: Symbol not found: _gdImageCreateFromGif
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-gdchart-1.0.0/./GDChart.bundle

it might be a good idea to update your installed darwin ports:

$ sudo port upgrade installed

Installing ruby-gdchart

Thanks to the Pickaxe book and _why for the explanation of the extconf configuration.

Use RubyGems to start the installation of this:

sudo gem install ruby-gdchart

This will fail because extconf.rb won’t find the libgd and complain about it.

Navigate to /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-gdchart-1.0.0/ext and edit extconf.rb so that the first couple of lines look like this:

require 'mkmf'

dir_config("gd")
GDCHART_DIR = "./gdchart0.11.5dev"

adding dir_config(“gd”) allows us to specify where the gd libraries are to be found

Then edit ext/gddchart0.11.5dev/Makefile so that the sections install locations and lib gd look like this:

# ----- install locations -----
PREFIX_INC = /opt/local/include
PREFIX_LIB = /opt/local/lib

# INCLUDEDIRS=-I. -I/opt/local/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/X11 -I/usr/X11R6/include/X11 -I/opt/local/include 

# ----- lib gd -----
# GDChart requires the gd library - www.boutell.com/gd/
# gd 2.0.28 or better is required (GIF support has returned to libgd)
# if it's not installed in a standard location edit these lines for your installation
GD_INCL=/opt/local/include/
GD_LD=/opt/local/lib/
#GD_LIB=libgd.so
# a static libgd is also available
 GD_LIB=libgd.a

then run the following command:

$ ruby extconf.rb --with-gd-dir=/opt/local

This will compile the ruby extension. Now it needs to be installed. Rerun:

$ sudo gem install ruby-gdchart

to install the newly built library to the correct location.

This has gotten ruby-gdchart to work on my installation. However, the example files don’t seem to work…. Maybe someone else has more info?

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