Installing older version of imagemagick with homebrew

Question

I need to install an older version of imagemagick (6.5.9-3), I can see it in the list of available versions

> brew versions
6.6.1-5  git checkout 1c9f04e Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb
6.5.9-8  git checkout 685dbff Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb
6.5.9-3  git checkout 258720c Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb
6.5.6-5  git checkout 7c90d02 Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb
6.5.5-10 git checkout b01c13d Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb

but when I checkout that version with

> git checkout 258720c Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb

and then run

> brew install imagemagick

I get an error saying that

Error: imagemagick is a head-only formula
Install with `brew install --HEAD imagemagick

Why is brew listing those versions if it can't install them? So the question remains, how to install an older version of imagemagick with brew?

(This solution is not working any longer: Cannot install older version of ImageMagick via Homebrew)

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

You can define your own Homebrew formula in a GitHub Gist and install it with

brew install path/to/your/GistToYourPersonalImageMagickFormula

for example here or here