title: Why can't I install SDL on any of my portable perl installations on windows?
body: <p>At school we have been told to do a private project, in a language of our choosing. I chose perl, and for the graphics (compulsory component)  chose SDL. </p>
  
  <p>Earlier I had installed portable-git, and the git-bash thing came with perl. Hooray! It worked! Let's install sdl!</p>
  
  <pre><code>cpan SDL
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>output:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Can't locate CPAN/Author.pm in @INC (you may need to install the CPAN::Author module)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This confused me, especially when I get the same message for <code>cpan CPAN::Author</code>.
  So I install a portable version of strawberry-perl (school computer security settings forbid installation of software by non-admins), and I get a different error message (after loading a bunch of stuff):</p>
  
  <pre><code>Welcome to Alien::SDL module installation                                                                               
  -----------------------------------------                                                                                 
  checking operating system... MSWin32                                                                                    
  checking for gcc... yes                                                                                                 
  checking build system type... MSWin32-x64-multi-thread                                                                  
  checking platform specific module... using 'My::Builder::Windows'                                                       
  checking SDL_INST_DIR env var... no                                                                                     
  checking for config script... no                                                                                        
  checking for prebuilt binaries... no                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  You have the following options:                                                                                         
  [1] Quit installation                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
  What way do you wanna go? [1 ]1                                                                                         
  No 'Build' created  FROGGS/Alien-SDL-1.446.tar.gz                                                                         
  C:\Users\gardner.mark.INFOLAB\Downloads\strawberry-perl\perl\bin\perl.exe 
  Build.PL -- NOT OK                          Stopping: 'install' failed for 
  'Alien::SDL'. 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have tried <code>cpan Alien::SDL</code>, and using the -f flag on both commands, but I still get the same message. Do I need to install something else, or what is the problem? </p>
  
  <p>EDIT: as @xxfelixxx suggested, I installed cpanm successfully. However, that gives the following output, with an error (in bold):</p>
  
  <pre><code>--&gt; Working on SDL                                                                                                      
  Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/F/FR/FROGGS/SDL-2.548.tar.gz ... OK                                             
  ==&gt; Found dependencies: Alien::SDL, Tie::Simple                                                                         
  --&gt; Working on Alien::SDL                                                                                               
  Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/F/FR/FROGGS/Alien-SDL-1.446.tar.gz... OK
  Configuring Alien-SDL-1.446 ... N/A                                                                                     
  ! Configure failed for Alien-SDL-1.446. See [...]\STRAWB~1\data\.cpanm\work\1527577290.7232\build.log for details.                                                                                                     
  --&gt; Working on Tie::Simple                                                                                             
  Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/H/HA/HANENKAMP/Tie-Simple-1.04.tar.gz ... OK                                    
  Configuring Tie-Simple-1.04 ... OK                                                                                      
  Building and testing Tie-Simple-1.04 ... OK                                                                             
  Successfully installed Tie-Simple-1.04                                                                                  
  ! Installing the dependencies failed: Module 'Alien::SDL' is not installed                                              
  ! Bailing out the installation for SDL-2.548.                                                                           
  1 distribution installed 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So, as earlier, Alien::SDL fails to configure itself.</p>