Installing RMagick and ImageMagick

OK this took a day to find out.
RMagick wraps around ImageMagick so you need both of them.
To install ImageMagic you need perl - which is fine but you won't be able to install (configure and make) if perl has been compiled with a c compiler from sun. It throws out -KPIC for gcc and it should send gcc a -fPIC when compiling.

So move rename perl link in the /usr/bin and the the perl root directory wherever that might be forexample /perl

get the stable perl source code from perl.com and download it
useraccount> pfexec tar xvf perl_download
useraccount> pfexec perl_download
useraccount> pfexec ./Configure
useraccount> pfexec make
useraccount> pfexec make test
useraccount> pfexec make install

perl should now be in /opt/bin/perl with a link to it from /usr/bin

Once you have done that download ImageMagick source files
useraccount> pfexec tar xvf ImageMagick
useraccount> cd ImageMagick
useraccount> pfexec ./configure --disable-static --with-modules --without-perl --without-magick-plus-plus --with-quantum-depth=8 CC=gcc
useraccount> pfexec make
useraccount> pfexec make install

ImageMagick should now be in /usr/local/bin

Then test it with
useraccount> /usr/local/bin/convert logo: logo.gif

I did most of the above based on the info here and here