'use lib' can't find Perl module - perl

Question

I'm on Windows 7, I downloaded a CPAN module called XML::XPath, and I want to use it in a script I wrote.
I cannot modify #INC on my machine, I cannot modify environmental variables on my machine, I cannot run make on my machine, and I cannot use a package manager on my machine.
So in order to use the module, I went to the CPAN website, downloaded the module's .tar.gz file, and unzipped it into a lib folder in my project. I did that because this guide suggested that I can use use lib in the context of my script to reference the downloaded module:
Adding a use lib statement to the script will add the directory to #INC for that specific script. Regardless who and in what environment runs it.
My script is called test.pl. I am trying to use the XML::XPath module to parse an XML file called test.xml. Here is an example of my directory structure:
C:/
→ sandbox/
test.pl
test.xml
→ lib/
→ XML-XPath-1.13/
XPath.pm
→ XPath/
XMLParser.pm
(etc.)
This is my test.pl script:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use lib qw("C:/sandbox/lib/XML-XPath-1.13");
my $xml_file = "C:/sandbox/test.xml";
my $result;
if (-f $xml_file) {
$result = XML::XPath->new(filename => "$xml_file");
}
When I run this script with perl test.pl, the script fails with the following error:
Can't locate object method "new" via package "XML::XPath" (perhaps you forgot to load "XML::XPath"?) at test.pl line 10.
Can I resolve this error with use lib?
EDIT:
When I add use XML::XPath; to my test.pl script, as such:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use lib qw("C:/sandbox/lib/XML-XPath-1.13");
I get an error like:
Can't locate XML/XPath.pm in #INC
But as stated above, I cannot physically modify #INC or recompile Perl on my machine.

Answer 1

This is not going to work. XML::XPath depends on the XML::Parser module which needs to be compiled. Since you do not have a complete toolchain with a C compiler available, there is no way you are getting this to run. You will have to search for a different way to handle your XML.
Just extracting a tarball only works when you have a pure-Perl module.
The easiest way to get a full Perl toolchain on Windows is to install Linux install the Strawberry Perl distribution. There's even a ZIP edition and a portable edition that can be installed on a thumb drive, no admin privileges required.
Your more immediate problem is that XML::XPath in version 1.13 seems to be a shoddy module with an unusual directory layout. The package you are trying to load is at XML-XPath-1.13/XPath.pm but should be at XML-XPath-1.13/lib/XML/XPath.pm. Why?
When you say use XML::XPath; this does two things. First, Perl searches for a file XML/XPath.pm in all #INC directories. Assuming you have something like
use FindBin;
use lib "$FindBin::Bin/lib/XML-XPath-1.13";
then perl would expect a file PROJECT/lib/XML-XPath-1.13/XML/XPath.pm which doesn't exist (where I'm using PROJECT as placeholder for the directory of your script).
Since the file PROJECT/lib/XML-XPath-1.13/XPath.pm does exist you could say use XPath;.
But then the second thing happens: The package is imported so that it can load subroutines or constants into your namespace. The use'd package name is now used as a class: XPath->import. However, the XPath.pm file does not contain the XPath package but the XML::XPath package, so there is no XPath class with an import method.
The import method call can be suppressed by providing an empty list in the use statement: use XPath ();.
Better than such hacks, you could use a more recent version of XML::XPath (version 1.13 is from 2003, but the newer version 1.42 is from 2007). Once you extract it you could use lib "$FindBin::Bin/lib/XML-XPath-1.42/lib" and then use XML::XPath;.
But this still won't work, because XML::XPath does use XML::Parser and you don't have that module installed. Now we are back to your main problem: XML::Parser needs to be compiled first because it contains a C extension, and also relies on an external library. Without a full toolchain you can't compile it.

Answer 2

First of all, you should properly install the module into lib rather than unzipping the distribution into lib.
Then, you'll need
use FindBin qw( $RealBin );
use lib "$RealBin/lib";
use XML::XPath qw( );