Learning Perl/Tk

1.5. Installing the Tk Module

Before we go into more details on using Perl/Tk, we should cover how to install it. There are many different ways to get Perl and Tk and install them on your machine. You can get the source and compile it (easy in Unix; not so easy in MS Windows), or you can get a binary distribution and install that. Some of the binary distributions may not have all the components you want in it though, so make sure you read any README files included with the package.

The two major binary distributions for Perl on Win32 are available from ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com) and CPAN (http://www.perl.com). The binary distribution on CPAN includes the Tk module, so that's the one I'll cover here.

First you need to get Perl installed:

You can test to see if you already have the Tk module installed by using this command (both Unix and Win32):

perl -e 'use Tk'

If you don't get an error, you're ready to go. If you do get one, the error will look like this:

Can't locate Tk.pm in @INC (@INC contains: C:\PERL\lib\site C:\PERL\lib c:\
perl\lib c:\perl\lib\site c:\perl\lib\site .) at myscript line 1.

You'll need to find the Tk module on a CPAN site. Try starting with http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Tk/From that directory, find the following files: Tk*readme and Tk*tar.gz (always try to grab the latest versions; the * is for the version number). Be careful when you download the .gz file because some systems try to rename the file to .tar.tar. Simply rename the ...