In the past I've recommended ppm MinGW package (not module) to install MinGW & dmake. Anecdotally it seems to me that there are fewer non ActiveState hosted PPM repos around, the list in PPM::Repositories seems not to be maintained (dead URLs, perl v5.18 is the latest listed), they still don't have a 5.28 release available. There's a 50/50 chance our client will ask us to migrate from Solaris to Windows, at which point I'd recommend Strawberry over AS.