That's exactly what I said. All modules depend on the toolchain. That's why it's called the toolchain. The consensus that the toolchain will support 5.8.1 does not imply that other modules must. (They may however have difficulty supporting Perl versions older than 5.8.1, because their install scripts will rely on the toolchain. However, if you write your install scripts carefully, people on, say, Perl 5.6 can make do by installing older versions of key toolchain modules.)