Some historical background, in case it is of some use.

The Oslo Consensus (May 2008)

• $ENV{AUTOMATED_TESTING} - not $ENV{PERL_AUTOMATED_TESTING}
• $ENV{RELEASE_TESTING} - not $ENV{AUTHOR_TESTING} or $ENV{PERL_AUTHOR_TESTING}
• xt/ directory for release and other non-install-time tests (subdirectories optional)
• Support 'requires => { perl => 5.xxx }' and extend to to all 'requires' types
• *.PL should generate META_LOCAL.yml with requirements after dynamic configuration

The Lancaster Consensus (April 2013)

See The Lancaster Consensus and The Annotated Lancaster Consensus for full details.

Historically, AUTOMATED_TESTING has been confusing, used for a number of different purposes:

1. I don't want the user to interact with this test.
2. This is a long-running test.
3. This test depends on an external website (say) and I don't want to stop the user installing if it fails, but I want to see what CPAN smokers experienced.

The Lancaster Consensus clarifies the semantics of AUTOMATED_TESTING and RELEASE_TESTING and adds three new environment variables, making a total of five:

• AUTOMATED_TESTING
• NONINTERACTIVE_TESTING
• EXTENDED_TESTING
• RELEASE_TESTING
• AUTHOR_TESTING

To run module tests after installation, use new target "make test-installed", equivalent to "make test" but without adding blib to @INC.

Some Related CPAN Modules

• Module::Install::ExtraTests
• Module::Install::AuthorTests
• Test::Manifest
• Test::XT

See also: Perl CPAN test metadata in addition to The Oslo Consensus and The Lancaster Consensus covers The Berlin Consensus (2015) and PTS Oslo (2018)