Your requirements for upgrading aren't Perl specific. Looking for a Perl specific answer isn't the right way of going. There are several package managers out there that will have the functionality that you require. Unfortunally, package managers tend to be very non-portable. Suns package manager will do what you want it to do, and so will HP's swinstall. There's a entire army of package managers for Linux systems, but whether they will have all the functionality that you require, I cannot answer.

Abigail