php5-gd package missing functions (imagerotate etc.)

[James Lewis]

There appears to be several people online reporting issues with php5-gd in Debian & Ubuntu which are complaining about missing functions. I felt that it was worth captuing as this may be a packaging issue, I've tested on 14.04 latest and I can replicate the issue... it is fine on RedHat however, for example.

To quote some existing posts on the subject:-

"The version Ubuntu uses misses some functions like imagerotate and imageantialias, which are needed by an increasing number of software projects."

The issue can be replicated as follows:-

"Make sure you have php5-cli, php5-gd.

First, check if you even have a problem. On the commandline type:
php -r "var_dump(function_exists('imageantialias'));"
This will return bool(false) if you are missing the function imageantialias(), and bool(true) if the function is pressent."

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: php5-gd 5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-17.37-generic 3.13.6
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-17-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.13.3-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Mar 18 11:37:15 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-25 (143 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
SourcePackage: php5
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-01-17 (59 days ago)

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

Cut/paste fail... clearly you don't need rpm or mc installed to replicate this.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

This is a duplicate of a long-standing "Won't Fix" issue. As far as I can determine from the previous comments, PHP upstream have forked GD and not sent their changes upstream, and it is Debian and Ubuntu's policy to use system libraries over bundled ones for security reasons. See the original bug for details.

Please do continue to report any other bugs you find.