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

Hello kindly Perl votaries. I installed Strawberry Perl Portable edition to a USB drive yesterday, and today I began using it. I tried to install a CPAN module I used in the course of trying to create a CUFP (Almost cool: removable drive "finder" instead of windows autoplay). The module is Win32::DriveInfo. I had installed that module a few days ago under CygwinPerl and the installation went fine. Today when I tried to use my newly configured CPAN.pm under portable Strawberry, I got the oddest failures. Here's what my console showed me:

cpan[8]> install Win32::DriveInfo
Running install for module 'Win32::DriveInfo'
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/authors/id/M/MB/MBLAZ/Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar.gz
CPAN: Digest::SHA loaded ok (v6.04)
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/authors/id/M/MB/MBLAZ/CHECKSUMS
CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok (v2.213)
Checksum for C:\Users\somia\AppData\strawberry-perl-sourcecache\author
+s\id\M\MB\MBLAZ\Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar.gz ok
'C:' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Uncompressed C:\Users\somia\AppData\strawberry-perl-sourcecache\author
+s\id\M\MB\MBLAZ\Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar.gz successfully
Using Tar:C:/ix/cygwin/bin/tar.exe xvf "Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar":
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/Makefile.PL
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/DriveInfo.pm
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/Changes
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/test.pl
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/README
Win32-DriveInfo-0.06/MANIFEST
Untarred Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar successfully
CPAN: CPAN::Meta::Requirements loaded ok (v2.143)
CPAN: CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v2.150010)
Package contains both files[Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar] and directories[
+Win32-DriveInfo-0.06]; not recognized as a perl package, giving up
Configuring M/MB/MBLAZ/Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar.gz with Makefile.PL
Running make for M/MB/MBLAZ/Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar.gz
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.
  MBLAZ/Win32-DriveInfo-0.06.tar.gz
  C:/ix/cygwin/bin/make.exe -- NOT OK
Stopping: 'install' failed for 'Win32::DriveInfo'.

[download]

The same fatal error took place just now when I tried to build/install Win32::Env. Does anyone have any idea why I'd see this failure?

Jun 03, 2025 at 18:32 UTC

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: It's Tuesday, so it must be the day for Trouble With Cpan
by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 03, 2025 at 18:45 UTC

    I would first look at the seemingly broken tool setup, as indicated by the console output:

    'C:' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

    [download]

    Maybe manually installing the package from the unpacked directory works.

[reply]
[d/l]

      My guess: «C:/...» is used, and the «/» in «C:/...» is treated as the start of a switch. This can be fixed by using «C:\...» or «"C:/..."» instead.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        And the fact that a Cygwin build of make is used when installing a module for a Windows build of Perl could also cause issues. Stick to one OS! Strawberry already provides the tools you need.

[reply]
[d/l]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom