Error about gif support in ActivePerl 5.36

[slalaurette]

Hi! This is a very old issue that I found years ago, was unable to solve, and I'm facing again after trying to use Prima with a new ActivePerl installation (using the new "ActiveState Platform" version and the "state tool" to install and update modules).

Whenever I use Prima; in a script, I get this error message in the console as the script starts executing:

Failed to load standard bitmap 'c:/Users/sebastian/AppData/Local/activestate/cache/fe8afb71/site/lib/Prima/sys/win32/sysimage.gif':No appropriate codec found. Did you compile Prima with GIF support?

Then, of course, I can't use any gif images in my script.

I tried uninstalling Prima, installing Prima::codecs::win64, and then reinstalling Prima, just in case. But, alas, it didn't work.

I see there are precompiled binaries for other Perls, but not for ActivePerl, so I wonder if there is a way I can get one, or instruct ActiveState, somehow, to build Prima with gif support.

I can't switch to Strawberry Perl for several reasons, one of them being the future of that particular Perl looks dubious (the latest version being 5.32).

Any help will be appreciated!

[dk]

Hello

Some months ago I was trying to see what is the status with ActivePerl, and I couldn't do much with it as they replaced their PPM with the state tool, which refuses to install either MinGW (as it used to do), or GCC -- a total mess!

I'm not sure how you managed to install gcc there, but if you did that, you can try to use it to install libgif from source from https://giflib.sourceforge.net/ . Or probably you can copy the needed files from Prima::codecs::win64 as try to re-run Makefile.PL and see the error messages in makefile.log, to see if it could locate these.

Sorry couldn't be of much help because I couldn't make ActiveState work properly

/dk

[dk]

And this is also official, after I asked: https://community.activestate.com/t/how-to-install-gcc-and-or-mingw/10993/2 . So no, ActivePerl is not really a usable platform so far.

[slalaurette]

Well, that really sucks. But thank you for checking with the ActiveState people!

I'll see if I can keep a separate installation of Strawberry just to be able to use Prima with it.

If that's not feasible, will I just be unable to use gif images in my scripts, or are there other, more important things that will fail?

[dk]

I have an idea I'd like to check out later, basically to augment an activestate installation with a mingw distro, possibly even one from strawberry. If that will be a success, I shall make a guideline/howto about it. Let's not close this ticket, I'd like to have this addressed

[dk]

Just recently I got to know that there are releases from Strawberry perl, just not on the frontpage - apparently they lost access to it. But the releases are there and are just fine: https://github.com/StrawberryPerl/Perl-Dist-Strawberry/releases , I tried 5.38 and it's working fine with Prima, although libwebp support is not there. If you need that too, you're welcome to ++ this issue as well: https://github.com/StrawberryPerl/Perl-Dist-Strawberry/issues/125

Anyhow, I would urge you to try them see if they work for your project too.

[dk]

Strawberry v5.38 is officially out, and it still seems that it is impossible to get ActiveState to support custom compilations. I'll close the ticket but you're welcome to reopen it if/when AS changes its stance on this in future.