Interesting solution... I suppose that installdirs=(site||perl) would dictate whether the installation goes into lib/perl/site_perl/5xxxx or lib/perl/5xxxx.

I don't quite understand how my CGI works, as they have some kind of secure set-up. It uses a completely different server, and requires scripts to be permitted 700. I can't determine if it runs as me or if it runs as nobody, and if it runs as me it seems equivocal wether it picks up my PERLLIB environment or not.

Of course, as soon as I write that I realize that I could write a cgi script to find that out rather quickly...

What I have done in the past is create symlinks to the required modules from the CGI directory to my LIB directory, and this seems to work fine.

Perhaps the BEGIN block would be more appropriate...

</ajdelore>

use lib LIST;

is almost the same as saying:

BEGIN { unshift(@INC, LIST) }

The only difference is that, for each directory in the list, it checks for an architecture specific directory below. So, you've definitely hit on the right idea, but I think
use lib '/home/my_home_path/.cpan/CPAN'; is a little cleaner.

The other thing that might help is that you can configure CPAN to automate the exact sequence you describe. Run perl -MCPAN -e shell and do the following:

o conf makepl_arg 'PREFIX=your_path_here INSTALLDIRS=site INSTALLSITELIB=your_path_here' (That's a lowercase 'o', not a bullet point)
o conf on its own will show you your current conf(iguration) options.
makepl_arg defines the options that will be passed after perl Makefile.PL

Then, in the interactive shell, install File::Spec would be equivalent to the commands you listed above.