ActiveState PPM, no Tk present

beavis01 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by marto (Cardinal) on Nov 11, 2011 at 16:20 UTC
Try `ppm install http://www.bribes.org/perl/ppm/Tk.ppd`.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by beavis01 (Initiate) on Nov 11, 2011 at 17:10 UTC
Thanks, got the following error: ppm install failed: The PPD does not provide code to install for this platform Most likely a 64-bit issue.	[reply]
Re^3: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by Marshall (Canon) on Nov 11, 2011 at 23:04 UTC
have a look here Re: Problem installing modules on Windows 7 64bit build (Active Perl 2.12.4). Sounds like there is going to be big trouble with 64 bit Windows for awhile as this is a compiler problem. running 32bit perl on your 64bit box should work fine.	[reply]
Re^4: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by beavis01 (Initiate) on Nov 15, 2011 at 18:49 UTC
Re: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by zentara (Cardinal) on Nov 11, 2011 at 18:45 UTC
My advice is ask on the ActiveState Perl's blog, or message board. The Tk ppms are out there, somewhere, for different arch's and platforms. I'm glad I use Linux. :-) I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh	[reply]
Re: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by gri6507 (Deacon) on Nov 11, 2011 at 18:36 UTC
One of the problems of ActiveState Perl is the fact that they do not have a full build environment to compile CPAN modules locally. That is why ActiveState distributes modules in PPD form. In essence, PPDs are precompiled version of the modules. It works great ... when you don't run into any snags. However, in my experience, modules like Tk can (and often do) cause problems. One alternative you can try is to use Straberry Perl (http://strawberryperl.com/) instead. It comes with its own native (MinGW) build environment all packaged up into a convenient package. If you install that, then you could install Tk in a standard way `perl -MCPAN -e "install Tk"`	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by dasgar (Priest) on Nov 11, 2011 at 18:50 UTC
What you said about Strawberry Perl is true, but the OP doesn't have to move from ActivePerl to Strawberry Perl in order to install from CPAN. From the PPM utility, a user can install MinGW and dmake. Once that's done, the user can install modules directly from CPAN by opening a command prompt and typing something like `cpan install Tk` to install a module even if it needs to be compiled. Don't have much experience with Strawberry Perl so I can't speak to whether it's "easier"/"better" than ActivePerl with installing CPAN modules that need to be compiled.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by gri6507 (Deacon) on Nov 11, 2011 at 19:05 UTC
You are correct that it is possible to install the MinGW environment into ActiveState. For the sake of completeness, to do so, start CMD.EXE and run (assuming ActivePerl is installed in C:\perl) `c:\perl\bin\ppm install MinGW` However, this alone is not going to be sufficient. In my experience that a user would then also have to add update their %PATH% environment variable to `path C:\perl\bin;C:\perl\site\bin;%PATH%` Then, the user would have to find and install nMake (i.e. http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/patch/1.52/w95/en-us/nmake15.exe) into some directory in their %PATH% (i.e. c:\perl\bin). Only then can they use CPAN safely. The alternative to that long winded solution is Strawberry Perl, where all of that rigamarole is done automatically for the user. Hence, my suggestion ;-)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by dasgar (Priest) on Nov 15, 2011 at 05:37 UTC
Re^3: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by syphilis (Archbishop) on Nov 12, 2011 at 00:26 UTC
From the PPM utility, a user can install MinGW and dmake Yes - but that only works for 32-bit versions of ActivePerl and, from the op's second post in this thread, it seems a 64-bit build of ActivePerl is being used. Another alternative is to download, from Microsoft, the same compiler that was used to build the x64 ActivePerl. It's free, and should still be available, though it can be a bit tricky to locate. Cheers, Rob	[reply]
Re: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by Dumu (Monk) on Apr 07, 2015 at 08:53 UTC
I know there's no Tk. But ... there is Tkx instead, which provides a wrapper between Perl and genuine Tcl-Tk. Obviously using Tkx will be easier for new development, as there are some minor differences. But porting an existing program to Tkx might not be too taxing.	[reply]
Re^2: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by Anonymous Monk on Apr 07, 2015 at 09:05 UTC
I know there's no Tk. But ... there is Tkx instead, which provides a wrapper between Perl and genuine Tcl-Tk. Tk is available from both http://code.activestate.com/ppm/Tk/ and http://www.bribes.org/perl/ppm/Tk.ppd Obviously using Tkx will be easier for new development, as there are some minor differences. But porting an existing program to Tkx might not be too taxing. Obiously you've never used Tkx :) Did you know Tk is available via ppm? so there is absolutely no reason to learn Tkx. Tkx is the worst possible option	[reply]
Re^3: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by Dumu (Monk) on Apr 07, 2015 at 11:15 UTC
Great, I shall try beautiful Perl/Tk for an upcoming project. Thanks! I still think Tkx was a good idea, but I've an open mind.	[reply]
Re^4: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by Anonymous Monk on Apr 07, 2015 at 23:00 UTC
Re^5: ActiveState PPM, no Tk present by Dumu (Monk) on Apr 08, 2015 at 08:26 UTC
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