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

I get above whenever I try to run the makefile for any Perl module from CPAN. Full message is always make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/config.h', needed by `Makefile'. Stop. ????? what is it trying to do, and what is missing or wrong ? I'm a Linux newby so be gentle. thanks, Rod

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: make: *** No rule to make target
by tachyon (Chancellor) on Jul 02, 2004 at 04:11 UTC

    I presume you have remebered to do:

    $ perl Makefile.PL $ make

    just to state the blindingly obvious. If so you have a (mis)configuration issue with perl. Report back what the following show:

    echo $PATH which perl perl -v locate CORE/config.h locate bin/perl

    cheers

    tachyon

      Mandrake 10 Perl 5.8.3 CORE didn't come with config.h and other files that were asked for by Make... I downloaded ActiveState Perl 5.8.4, which I've been very happy with before on Win32, and sure enough it comes with loads of files already setup in CORE. CPAN installation of Tk and Tk-Pod then succeeded with no problems, so I'm converting over to the Active State Perl. I still don't know what the CORE files are used for, can anybody tell me ?
        Did you try installing the perl-devel package? My impression was that Mandrake split the perl package and put the headers to compile against in perl in a separate package.

        CORE contains some perl header files. When you compile modules that link to Perl you may (or may not) need some of these header files available. The headers provide the stub functionality that the compiler needs to do its job.

        There is a lot to be said for compiling your own perl. It is not that hard. You get the latest version. Things tend to just work. You can have a try without breaking anything.

        cheers

        tachyon

Re: make: *** No rule to make target
by ercparker (Hermit) on Jul 02, 2004 at 04:14 UTC
    have you tried to install the module from the command line like:
    perl -MCPAN -e 'install module_name'
    you can get more details from the cpan website