Strawberry Perl v5.30.0 not able to install Tcl (Windows 10) - perl

Question

I downloaded and installed strawberry-perl-5.30.0.1-64bit.msi from strawberryperl.com on my Windows 10 and tried to install Tcl module using cpan, but it fails for missing tclsh. What could be the problem?
C:\Strawberry>cpan Tcl
Loading internal logger. Log::Log4perl recommended for better logging
CPAN: CPAN::SQLite loaded ok (v0.217)
Database was generated on Thu, 24 Oct 2019 12:40:15 GMT
Running install for module 'Tcl'
CPAN: Digest::SHA loaded ok (v6.02)
CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok (v2.086)
Checksum for C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\sources\authors\id\V\VK\VKON\Tcl-1.27.tar.gz ok
CPAN: Archive::Tar loaded ok (v2.32)
CPAN: YAML::XS loaded ok (v0.78)
CPAN: CPAN::Meta::Requirements loaded ok (v2.140)
CPAN: Parse::CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v2.150010)
CPAN: CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v2.150010)
CPAN: Module::CoreList loaded ok (v5.20190522)
Configuring V/VK/VKON/Tcl-1.27.tar.gz with Makefile.PL
'tclsh' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
error starting tclsh: $?=256; $!=
No 'Makefile' created VKON/Tcl-1.27.tar.gz
C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe Makefile.PL -- NOT OK
Stopping: 'install' failed for 'Tcl'.
C:\Strawberry>dir C:\Strawberry\cpan\build\Tcl-1.27-0
Volume in drive C is OSDisk
Volume Serial Number is BCC0-703E
Directory of C:\Strawberry\cpan\build\Tcl-1.27-0
25.10.2019 13.05 <DIR> .
25.10.2019 13.05 <DIR> ..
14.07.2018 11.00 5 207 Changes
22.08.2018 11.21 10 139 Makefile.PL
22.08.2018 11.45 1 723 MANIFEST
22.08.2018 11.45 1 140 META.json
22.08.2018 11.44 617 META.yml
14.07.2018 20.26 1 246 README
25.10.2019 13.05 <DIR> t
25.10.2019 13.05 <DIR> tcl-core
22.08.2018 11.43 43 540 Tcl.pm
22.08.2018 10.57 46 049 Tcl.xs
16.06.2018 15.18 439 tclcfg.tcl
16.06.2018 15.18 48 typemap
10 File(s) 110 148 bytes
4 Dir(s) 316 953 681 920 bytes free

Answer 1

You can build the missing dependency tclsh by downloading the source distribution from https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl8420-src.zip. To compile the source you need a C compiler. I tried the community edition of visual studio:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/
Click download community edition..
Then choose what to install
Then click "Install"
After installation, go to menu "Tools->Command Line->Developer Command Prompt" and run
nmake -f makefile.vc
from the win sub folder of the extracted Tcl source distribution (on my computer it was located at C:\Users\Bruker\tcl\tcl8.4.20\win)
The above nmake command creates a new folder Release_VC13 with an executable file tclsh84.exe. Note that the name of the executable is not tclsh.exe.
Now add the folder of the executable to the system PATH environment variable:
C:\Users\Bruker\tcl\tcl8.4.20\win\Release_VC13, then close the command prompt and reopen again to refresh the path settings.
Try type tclsh84, and you should get a tcl shell command prompt with a leading % prompt. Then type exit to exit the tcl shell.
The next problem is to install the Tcl module using Strawberry perl. Trying first to run:
> cpan Tcl
[...]
'tclsh' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
error starting tclsh: $?=256; $!=
No 'Makefile' created VKON/Tcl-1.27.tar.gz
C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe Makefile.PL -- NOT OK
Stopping: 'install' failed for 'Tcl'.
The problem is that the executable is not called tclsh but tclsh84 (see above).
The next thing I did was to download the source distribution for the Tcl module:
> cpan -g Tcl
Then extracted the downloaded file Tcl-1.27.tar.gz and changed to the source distribution directory. By inspecting the Makefile.PL I found that the Makefile.PL took a command line argument --tclsh that gave the name of the tcl shell command. So I tried:
> perl Makefile.PL --tclsh=tclsh84
and this worked fine now. Then I tried to compile with gmake (which comes with the Strawberry Perl distribution):
> gmake
This also worked, but running gmake test failed, and also installing and testing the module:
> gmake install
> perl -MTcl -e1
failed dlopen(C:/Users/Bruker/tcl/tcl8.4.20/win/Release_VC13/tcl84.dll,...);
failed dlopen(./tcl84.dll,...);
failed dlopen(tcl84.dll,...);
trying dlopen(tcl89.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl88.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl87.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl86.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl85.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl84.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl83.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl82.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl81.dll,...)
trying dlopen(tcl80.dll,...)
failed all posible tcl vers 8.x from 9 down to 0 at C:/Strawberry/perl/lib/XSLoader.pm line 111.
Failed to load Tcl dll! at C:/Strawberry/perl/lib/XSLoader.pm line 111.
Unable to initialize Tcl at C:/Strawberry/perl/lib/XSLoader.pm line 111.
Compilation failed in require.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.
I plan to come back to this problem later and investigate further.