Most folks just use the ppm GUI, but there are quite a number of command line options for ppm.
I attach a few commands below.

I have "cloned" an Active State installation before. To do that, I saved a profile (which is an XML file)... Installed Active State from the web on the new machine and then restored the "profile" on the new machine. BTW, there are more PPD repositories than just the main Active State repo.

Just for fun, I just did a "ppd upgrade --install" on my current test machine. Go to lunch while this is running because it can take awhile. Many thousands of files on my machine were modified. However, it appears that all of my packages have been brought up to date, including the HTML doc's. A "dangerous" thing to do, but this a a test machine - not production.

Anyway, for those interested, muck around with ppm at the command line....

C:\Projects_Perl\testing>ppm -help
Unrecognized ppm command '-help'; try one of area, config, describe, f
+iles,
  gui, help, info, install, list, log, profile, query, remove, repo,
  search, tree, uninstall, update, upgrade, verify, or version
Usage:  ppm <cmd> <arg>...
        Run 'ppm help' to learn more.
        
C:\Projects_Perl\testing>ppm verify -help
    ppm verify [ *pkg* ]
        Checks that the installed files are still present and unmodifi
+ed. If
        the package name is given, only that packages is verified.    
+    

C:\Projects_Perl\testing>ppm profile -help
    ppm profile restore [ *filename* ]
        Install the packages listed in the given profile file. If no f
+ile is
        given try to read the profile from standard input.

    ppm profile save [ *filename* ]
        Write profile of configured repositories and installed package
+s to
        the given file. If no file is given then print the profile XML
+ to
        standard output.
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