make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/Config.pm', needed by `makefile'. Stop

I'm trying to install some extra modules in the git bash perl on windows. I got stuck trying to get ExtUtils::ParseXS installed. I was able to get the C part compiled (that's the hard part), but then it stops with this error: make: *** No rule to make target '/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/Config.pm', needed by 'makefile'. Stop.

The strange thing is, that /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/Config.pm exists!

Here are the parts of the (generated) Makefile that's failing (full Makefile is too large for stackoverflow):

# This Makefile is for the ExtUtils::ParseXS extension to perl.
...
DIRFILESEP = /
DFSEP = $(DIRFILESEP)
PERL_ARCHLIBDEP = /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl
FIRST_MAKEFILE = Makefile
...
# Where is the Config information that we are using/depend on
CONFIGDEP = $(PERL_ARCHLIBDEP)$(DFSEP)Config.pm $(PERL_INCDEP)$(DFSEP)config.h
...
# We take a very conservative approach here, but it's worth it.
# We move Makefile to Makefile.old here to avoid gnu make looping.
$(FIRST_MAKEFILE) : Makefile.PL $(CONFIGDEP)
    $(NOECHO) $(ECHO) "Makefile out-of-date with respect to $?"
    $(NOECHO) $(ECHO) "Cleaning current config before rebuilding Makefile..."
    -$(NOECHO) $(RM_F) $(MAKEFILE_OLD)
    -$(NOECHO) $(MV)   $(FIRST_MAKEFILE) $(MAKEFILE_OLD)
    - $(MAKE) $(USEMAKEFILE) $(MAKEFILE_OLD) clean $(DEV_NULL)
    $(PERLRUN) Makefile.PL
    $(NOECHO) $(ECHO) "==> Your Makefile has been rebuilt. <=="
    $(NOECHO) $(ECHO) "==> Please rerun the $(MAKE) command.  <=="
    $(FALSE)

I'm running the make command in git bash. Any help would be appreciated!

Solution

"Git bash" is a bash built using MSYS, a unix emulation environment.

You are using a Windows build of make, and you expect it to interact with that virtual unix environment. Only programs built using MSYS can do that.

As such, you need to figure out how to install a make built using MSYS.

Unless you have a particular reason to use the bash provided by git, I suggest using an alternative. I suspect it will be a lot easier.

It looks like MSYS2 has a package manager, and might be a lot more usable. But I know nothing about it.

You could use Cygwin. It's unix emulation environment just like MSYS. It provides bash. But not just bash. It provides git, perl, make, python, and a whole lot more through its package manager. The package manager has an easy-to-use Windows GUI interface (as well as a command-line interface). (The Cygwin installer itself is the package manager. Re-run it any time to update, remove or add packages.) I've used this for a long time, and I still do a little.

I now use Ubuntu installed under Windows Subsystem for Linux v2. Think of WSL as a VM for Linux built into Windows. Relatively easy to install. (No need for partitions or anything like that.) The host can access the VM's files (through \\WSL$) and vice-versa (through /mnt/c), but the programs are native Linux programs; they will only run inside of the VM. A number of Linux distros are available.