Well, has it not been a long time coming? These stubborn libraries have caused me more than a couple of headaches in the past months, but finally (evil laugh) I have coaxed them into working.
How I hear you asking? well following the instructions over at the rmagick rubyforge site really worked this time. Previously I’ve tried to build the whole shebang from source using Will Groppe’s instructions, while this was my preferred option I had mixed results and was unable to get gruff working. Maybe next time I do a clean install I’ll try again.