Admin note: I posted this to "Seekers..." but on reflection it probably should be a "Meditation". Could someone with the power please move it.

I have Strawberry Perl 5.10.0.2 installed on WinXP SP3 and Win2003 boxes.

I can download modules from CPAN and build them manually using.

perl Makefile.PL
dmake
dmake test
dmake install
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This all works fine because the PATH, INCLUDE and LIB environment variables contain the relevant directories under C:\strawberry.

However if I use the CPAN module it invokes perl to build the Makefile thus:

C:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe Makefile.PL LIBS=-LC:\strawberry\c\lib
+ INC=-
IC:\strawberry\c\include
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Most of the time this is harmless but in some cases this results in a broken Makefile. For example in Compress::Raw::Zlib Makefile.PL contains the following:

WriteMakefile( 
    NAME         => 'Compress::Raw::Zlib',
    VERSION_FROM => 'lib/Compress/Raw/Zlib.pm',
    INC          => "-I$ZLIB_INCLUDE" ,
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Relevant extracts from the (broken) Makefile for Compress::Raw::Zlib generated by running Makefile.PL from CPAN:

#
#   MakeMaker ARGV: (q[LIBS=-LC:\strawberry\c\lib], q[INC=-IC:\strawbe
+rry\c\include])
#
#   MakeMaker Parameters:

#     INC => q[-I./zlib-src]

# --- MakeMaker constants section:

INC = -IC:\strawberry\c\include
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And, for comparison, relevant extracts from (working) Makefile for Compress::Raw::Zlib generated by running Makefile.PL manually:

#
#   MakeMaker ARGV: ()
#
#   MakeMaker Parameters:

#     INC => q[-I./zlib-src]

# --- MakeMaker constants section:

INC = -I./zlib-src
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The outcome of this is that under the CPAN module the compiler can't find any of the include files in the zlib-src subdirctory.

This is relatively easy to fix by editing c:/strawberry/perl/lib/CPAN/Config.pm and changing the line...

makepl_arg => q[LIBS=-LC:\\strawberry\\c\\lib INC=-IC:\\strawberry\\c\
+\include],
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...to...

makepl_arg => q[],
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Who should I advise this to in order to get it fixed in the next release of Strawberry?

Update: oops, transposition in the Makefile snippets corrected.

Update: jettero suggests there may be a mailing list. I hate mailing lists as a way of reporting bugs. They are just the wrong tool. I have now found (in the obvious place (D'oh!)) the "official" way to report bugs. I think I will copy have copied the relevant parts of this thread to ticket 39663 in the CPAN RT for Perl-Dist-Strawberry . Then I may post links to that to relevant mailing lists.