HostingRails.com

We had tried installing ImageScience and its dependencies like freeimage and Rubyinline. But it has failed to work properly on the server and we would recommend you to go with Rmagic instead for the time being.

What about Mini Magick?

I'm just aware that RMagick frequently hangs if large files are uploaded (due to memory leaks).

Mini Magick should be fine. In case the server (where you are hosting your account) does'nt have the required gem installed, then do post a ticket to our support department.

If there is ANY way to get ImageScience working on your servers, that would be great. RMagick is an absolute memory-eating monster (MiniMagick is better, but only marginally), and for apps (such as my 2 apps hosted here) that JUST need image resizing/cropping, ImageScience saves a TON on memory usage and makes life much simpler.

Much appreciated.

Until we get it working, I'd recommend just making system calls to perform the raw ImageMagick convert commands - that saves the most amount of memory.  

e.g.

system("convert public/images/path/to/dragon.gif -resize 64x64\>  public/images/path/to/shrink_dragon.gif")

see http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/

is there any update on getting imagesciene and freeimage running on the servers?

I've now installed Freeimage and image_science with other dependencies. Does that help ?

that's excellent news! thanks a lot Varun.

Image_science doesn't seem to be working. When my migration tries to load a starting set of images, it seems to try to compile image_science:

== StartingImages: migrating ==================================================
== StartingImages: reverting ==================================================
sh: /usr/bin/gcc: Permission denied
rake aborted!
error executing gcc -shared   -fPIC -g -O2 -I /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/i686-linux -I /usr/local/include -o "/home/giantmi/.ruby_inline/Inline_ImageScience_aa58.so" "/home/giantmi/.ruby_inline/Inline_ImageScience_aa58.c" -lfreeimage -lstdc++: 32256
Renamed /home/giantmi/.ruby_inline/Inline_ImageScience_aa58.c to /home/giantmi/.ruby_inline/Inline_ImageScience_aa58.c.bad


There's a gem out there:

giantmi@calvin [~/gmfans]# gem list | grep science
image_science (1.1.3)

But it doesn't load:

giantmi@calvin [~/gmfans]# irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'image_science'
LoadError: no such file to load -- image_science
       from (irb):1:in `require'
       from (irb):1

(That's the right require: I checked on my development machine: MacOSX, same version of image_science).

You need to

require 'rubygems'

before

require 'image_science'

however, this gives the gcc error.  We're looking into this and will keep you posted here.    

OK - we have a workaround for this.  We can copy the pre-compiled lib to your ~/.ruby_inline folder and it works.  

Please go ahead and open a support ticket and request that this be done on your account (please refer to this forum thread)