choroba has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all,

I need to install our huge Perl/Tk application on a MacBook. It worked years ago, we even used a signed package so the users weren't supposed to do anything advanced like compiling C libraries themselves. Unfortunately, the old installer doesn't work anymore.

Does anyone know how to install Perl/Tk an a MacBook? A manual way is enough for now, I'll try to find a way to automate it later.

Google finds lots of guidelines but most of them seem rather dated.

I hope it would be easier than rewriting all those several hundred thousand lines to a different GUI.

map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl Tk on a Mac
by choroba (Cardinal) on Apr 10, 2025 at 14:29 UTC
    It seems Tk tries to compile its own libpng if it can't find an existing one. The libpng needs some header files that don't exist on the modern macos, so the installation fails.

    By running 

    brew install pkgconf

    [download]

    I installed pkg-config which made it possible for Tk to find libpng and everything worked.

    I also installed 

    brew install libpng

    [download]
    but I'm not sure it's needed (didn't have enough time to experiment with it).

    (Read all the replies here and links from them elsewhere to get the context).

    map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
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Re: Perl Tk on a Mac
by bliako (Abbot) on Mar 20, 2025 at 09:21 UTC

    what's the problem?

    I mean the *first* problem that comes about?

[reply]
      Well, the main problem is I don't have a Mac, and a client is coming today to have the software installed :-)

      But there were reports from users the old installer stopped working. All their attempts seem to lead to #66.

      map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
[reply]
[d/l]
        Perhaps install Perl via Homebrew, then install Perl Tk with that?
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