Post any defects you find in the released or beta versions of the ImageMagick software here. Include the ImageMagick version, OS, and any command-line required to reproduce the problem. Got a patch for a bug? Post it here.
Not at all, since I have all the .la modules in /opt/local/lib . They were missing in 6.8.7-2, and, as told in that thread, and reintroduced in 6.8.7-3 (the port I have installed). This solved another problem, not mine. Also the error message ("no decode delegate for this image format") is quite different from the one I got ("symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64"). Why did you think that topic was relevant?
Well, that bug has been analyzed and solved in the Macports forum, see URL https://trac.macports.org/ticket/40993 . It turned out that all the Macports packages are now built using the compilers clang and clang++, and that clang++ mangles in its own way the procedure names. Using clang++ to compile and link the minimal example given produces no error and the executable runs correctly. It may be possible that the command line option -stdlib=libc++ is needed by the compiler/linker, but this point is not clear.
Problem solved - I just had to abandon my beloved gcc and switch to another compiler