Speaking of perl on PocketPC, I participated a bit porting 5.8.0 into WinCE, and can confirm it living there with (almost) full health, with PerlIO layers and most core modules, even most of them passed most tests. (Cassiopeia E125 is my config)

Speaking of minimal distribution on the other side, I can share another my experience: I succeeded "packing" perl-5.6.1+Tk+Compress::Zlib+(some-other-modules) into some 20 files, most of which are dll-s on my Win32 machine and all text modules being packed into "modules.pm" file (~130Kb in size) which at bootstrap time is unpacked into normal perl modules set.

Having in total 20 files with total size of ~2Mb I have perl with Tk and those selected modules, which I often use. Very convenient to make independent distributions...

Courage, the Cowardly Dog
things, I do for love to perl...