Thanks for taking the time to write up such a thorough reply.

I suspected that there may be no way in perl but was hoping that a guru might pop up and say something like:

BEGIN { use DB; DB::__initdebugger() }
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or alternatively, respond with an authoritative "No".

Some variant of your first response would suit my need, although for now I'll just continue using "perl -d ./script.pl" or "make testdb" when required. I really am just curious. The least I can do in response to your effort is provide you the context that provoked the question:

You haven't told us what it is that you need from the debugger
I actually want to use it interactively. While writing a module, I'm also writing a companion script that sets up a few objects and conditionally runs tests on them and/or leaves me at the debugging prompt. Then I can play around, debug, try things, interactively write new tests, etc. Nothing special