Debian: `imagemagick` preferrable to `libmagickwand-dev` ?

[vsalvino]

Based on my own testing, and looking through the Debian package builds, it seems that installing imagemagick would be much more lean and therefore preferable to installing libmagickwand-dev.

For example, libmagickwand-dev pulls in perl, python, etc. In a docker image, this can severely bloat the image. Another common scenario: if you happen to be using a Python docker image or a custom version of Python, this ends up installing a second unwanted version of Python.

Wanted to check if there was some reasoning for this, before making a pull request to update the docs. Anything I'm missing here?

[emcconville]

Good question.

The docs suggestion libmagickwand-dev is about 12 years old, and I can't speak to why the original author opted for this option. The Wand packages only needs libMagickWand & libMagickCore, but at one point, also needed libc. I've got nothing against updating the guide for something more generic, but would prefer to wait until Debian has a clear ImageMagick-7 roadmap.

Just an FYI, this would be a better Discussions topic, and not an issue.

[vsalvino]

Can confirm that either package installs ImageMagick 6. I tested this on both Debian and Fedora. The development dependencies are not necessary to use/install this python package.

Created a pull request and also added notes specifically for Docker images.