I thought that if you tried to upgrade ExtUtils, you end up having to re-install perl. Am I incorrect?

No. That was some old CPAN bug which upgrade your perl. ExtUtils::MakeMaker and ExtUtils::Constant are both regular cpan distributions (and MakeMaker even has a website ).

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.