Journal PhillC's Journal: Installing Tcl-0.95 module from CPAN

On my new Debian Testing system, I have installed Tcl8.5 and Tk8.5, rather than the older Tcl8.4 and Tk8.4.

This has lead to problems when trying to install the Tcl-0.95 modulefrom CPAN - http://search.cpan.org/dist/Tcl/

The errors I was seeing looked like the following:

> perl Makefile.PL
> tclsh=/usr/bin/tclsh
tcl_library=/usr/share/tcltk/tcl8.5
tcl_version=8.5
LIBS = -ltcl8.5
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at Makefile.PL line 204.
INC =
DEFINE =
Use of uninitialized value in string at Makefile.PL line 220.
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for Tcl

Make then subsequently fails with:

> make
> cp Tcl.pm blib/lib/Tcl.pm /usr/bin/perl /usr/share/perl/5.8/ExtUtils/xsubpp
-typemap /usr/share/perl/5.8/ExtUtils/typemap -typemap
typemap Tcl.xs > Tcl.xsc && mv Tcl.xsc Tcl.c
Please specify prototyping behavior for Tcl.xs (see perlxs manual)
cc -c -D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE -DTHREADS_HAVE_PIDS
-DDEBIAN -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local /include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -O2
-DVERSION=\"0.95\" -DXS_VERSION=\"0.95\" -fPIC
"-I/usr /lib/perl/5.8/CORE" Tcl.c
Tcl.xs:33:17: error: tcl.h: No such file or directory
Tcl.xs:127: error: expected ')' before '*' token
*snip* Lots more similar errors
make: *** Tcl.o Error 1

I have overcome this by digging around and find where exactly my Tcl config file resided and the correct include path. My new Makefile command looked like this:

>sudo perl Makefile.PL --tclsh /usr/bin/tclsh8.5 --tclconfig /usr/lib/tcl8.5/tclConfig.sh --include /usr/include/tcl8.5

The module was then made and installed without error. I think it was probably the inclusion of the include path that did the trick, as that's where the missing tcl.h is to be found