.. I can't find try.c in perl install directory

Aaah ... I believe it should still be there. Perhaps there's some problem with "write" permissions in that build directory. I just tried running sh Configure -des -Dcc=crap and the process (as expected) died with the same message as you got. But try.c was still there !!

I also got a message Configure: line 10: crap: command not found but you didn't get any message about cc not being found. I'm becoming more and more convinced that your problem is *not* that cc can't be found, but that try.c can't be created.

Cheers,
Rob