Installing on PASE environment on IBMi 7.4 OS

[stopthatgoat]

I'm trying to get this installed on our PASE environment for the IBMi 7.4 OS. It's not available via the standard IBM Open Source Management repository so checking whether there are any sort of installation assistance for the iseries PASE environment.

Thanks for any help that can be provided.

[urban-warrior]

You can always build from source. See https://imagemagick.org/script/install-source.php.

[stopthatgoat]

Well definitely getting further but now I'm getting stuck on the configure step.

checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking minix/config.h usability... no
checking minix/config.h presence... no
checking for minix/config.h... no
checking whether it is safe to define EXTENSIONS... yes
checking for ar... ar
checking the archiver (ar) interface... unknown
configure: error: could not determine ar interface

Looks like the old ImageMagick website had some reports of this same problem for the IBMi but no solutions.

[BrianGodsend]

DISCLAMER

AT THE END OF A DAY, I STILL DID NOT GET THIS WORKING ... CLOSE (PERHAPS?), BUT, NOT WORKING.

Following is what I did to get ImageMagick compiled (but not really working). I simply ran out of time and patience and figure that if I cannot get it to be compiled and have the ability to decode a .jpg image after a full day of trying, then it is too complex for me to deploy in a production environment (with other developers less knowledgeable than me). As such, I am abandoning my efforts, for now. Hopefully, my notes on what I did will spur someone who actually knows what they are doing to take this to the finish line and post a comment here.

Notes on my (failed) attempt

On an IBM i running v7.4 TR7, I just installed the Open Source Software (OSS) developer group using yum (yum group install "Development Tools"). Also, based on a (this)[https://stackoverflow.com/a/66116056] post, I also installed the packages for:

• libjpeg8
• libpng-devel
• libpng16
• libtiff
• libtiff-devel
• libtiff5

Now that I had all the needed components, I then downloaded the current ImageMagick source release (v7.1.1-31) and unpacked it on the IFS. When I ran ./configure --disable-shared, I got the same error:

checking for ar... ar
checking the archiver (ar) interface... unknown
configure: error: could not determine ar interface

Looking in the log file, config.log, I found the following errors:

configure:6998: ar cru libconftest.a conftest.o >&5
ar: 0707-126 conftest.o is not valid with the current object file mode.
 Use the -X option to specify the desired object mode.
configure:7001: $? = 1
configure:7007: ar -NOLOGO -OUT:conftest.lib conftest.o >&5
ar: illegal option -- N
configure:7010: $? = 1
configure:7029: result: unknown
configure:7045: error: could not determine ar interface

It looks like the ar command on the IBM i requires the -X switch. I have no idea what this switch does, so I used the option any ... this may be enough cause to stop trying what I did, again, I do not know what I am doing, other than trying to get ImageMagick to compile on my IBM i. To get the configure script to run, I edited the configure script file and changed:

am_ar_try='$AR cru libconftest.a conftest.$ac_objext >&5'
-to-
am_ar_try='$AR -Xany cru libconftest.a conftest.$ac_objext >&5'

I re-ran the configure script (with the --disable-shared option) and it completed normally.

Of course, when I ran the make command, it eventually ended with the same error thrown by the ar command. So, I made changes to the following files:

• ./libtool
  • I changed lt_ar_flags=cr to lt_ar_flags='-Xany cr'
• ./config/configure.xml
  • I added <configure name="ARFLAGS" value="-Xand cr"/> to the <configuremap> node

NOTE:
Remember that if you run the ./configure script it will (likely) replace these files.

Running make completed ... with a lot of warnings. As they were only warnings (and too many for me do crawl through), I just moved on to the next step and ran make install. This did get ImageMagick installed in /usr/local/bin. However, when I tried a simple .jpg to .tiff conversion using convert mypic.jpg mypic.tiff, the command failed to decode the .jpg image.

So, at the end of a long day, I did get it to compile, but, it does not really work (at least for my needs) ... 😦 ... make uninstall ... signoff,