in reply to perl 5.8 upgrade - @INC problem

If you have any modules with compiled components, they likely won't work with the new version of Perl, for various versions of "won't work" including "will crash", "will not start", and "will throw out lots of error messages while not starting and right before crashing".

Fortunately, if you have CPAN installed (and you most likely do), you can use the autobundle feature to get a snapshot of what you have installed, making it much easier to install the modules on the new version. It's just one command. See perldoc CPAN for more.