I'm following up to myself again. I haven't discovered exactly why this is happening but it has inflated greatly.

Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reaching size 4443; for 'get'
…
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reaching size 4443; for 'prepare'
…
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reaching size 4443; for 'make'
…
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reaching size 4443; for 'test'

I'm doggedly determined to figure this out but others matters have intervened. I know more than a few people would say that the answer is use cpanm and it's not a bad answer; I have been using canpm some of the time. See my previous self-reply above for details on what I've looked at so far.

    – Soren
Feb 23, 2026 at 17:12 UTC

I anticipate that some readers will want the entire context. Here it is tucked into READMORE:

$ cpan
cpan> test Sub::Exporter::Lexical
CPAN: Term::ANSIColor loaded ok (v5.01)
CPAN: HTTP::Tiny loaded ok (v0.092)
CPAN: Net::SSLeay loaded ok (v1.94)
CPAN: IO::Socket::SSL loaded ok (v2.098)
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Reading 'C:/Users/somia/AppData/strawberry-perl-sourcecache/authors/01
+mailrc.txt.gz'
CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok (v2.213)
CPAN: YAML::XS loaded ok (vv0.902.0)
Reading 123 yaml files from /cygdrive/C/Users/somia/cygwin-perl-cpan/b
+uild/
..............................................................DONE
Restored the state of 28 (in 1.5971 secs)
......................................................................
+......DONE
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz
Reading 'C:/Users/somia/AppData/strawberry-perl-sourcecache/modules/02
+packages.details.txt.gz'
  Database was generated on Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:53:03 GMT
CPAN: HTTP::Date loaded ok (v6.06)
......................................................................
+......DONE
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Reading 'C:/Users/somia/AppData/strawberry-perl-sourcecache/modules/03
+modlist.data.gz'
DONE
Running test for module 'Sub::Exporter::Lexical'
CPAN: CPAN::Kwalify loaded ok (v5.50)
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reachi
+ng size 4443; for 'get'
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.g
+z
CPAN: Digest::SHA loaded ok (v6.04)
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS
Checksum for C:/Users/somia/AppData/strawberry-perl-sourcecache/author
+s/id/R/RJ/RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz ok
CPAN: Archive::Tar loaded ok (v3.04)
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/README
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/Changes
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/LICENSE
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/dist.ini
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/META.yml
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/MANIFEST
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/t
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/t/basic.t
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/META.json
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/snippet.pl
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/Makefile.PL
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/t/lib
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/t/lib/TestExporter.pm
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/t/00-report-prereqs.t
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/xt/author
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/xt/author/pod-syntax.t
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/t/00-report-prereqs.dd
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/xt/author/00-compile.t
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/lib/Sub/Exporter
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/lib/Sub/Exporter/Lexical.pm
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/xt/release
Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001/xt/release/changes_has_content.t
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reachi
+ng size 4443; for 'prepare'
CPAN: CPAN::Meta::Requirements loaded ok (v2.143)
CPAN: Parse::CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v2.150010)
CPAN: CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v2.150010)
CPAN: Module::CoreList loaded ok (v5.20250820)
Configuring R/RJ/RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz with Makefile.
+PL
CPAN: CPAN::Reporter loaded ok (v1.2020)
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Generating a Unix-style Makefile
Writing Makefile for Sub::Exporter::Lexical
Writing MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json
(/usr/bin/perl Makefile.PL exited with 0)
CPAN::Reporter: Makefile.PL result is 'pass', No errors.
  RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz
  /usr/bin/perl Makefile.PL -- OK
Running make for R/RJ/RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reachi
+ng size 4443; for 'make'
cp lib/Sub/Exporter/Lexical.pm blib/lib/Sub/Exporter/Lexical.pm
cp snippet.pl blib/lib/Sub/Exporter/snippet.pl
Manifying 1 pod document
(C:/ix/cygwin/bin/make exited with 0)
CPAN::Reporter: make result is 'pass', No errors.
  RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz
  C:/ix/cygwin/bin/make -- OK
Prepending blib/arch and blib/lib of 28 build dirs to PERL5LIB, reachi
+ng size 4443; for 'test'
CPAN: CPAN::DistnameInfo loaded ok (v0.12)
Running make test for RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 "/usr/bin/perl.exe" "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-MTes
+t::Harness" "-e" "undef *Test::Harness::Switches; test_harness(0, 'bl
+ib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t
#
# Versions for all modules listed in MYMETA.json (including optional o
+nes):
#
# === Configure Requires ===
#
#     Module              Want Have
#     ------------------- ---- ----
#     ExtUtils::MakeMaker 6.78 7.74
#
# === Build Requires ===
#
#     Module              Want Have
#     ------------------- ---- ----
#     ExtUtils::MakeMaker  any 7.74
#
# === Test Requires ===
#
#     Module              Want     Have
#     ------------------- ---- --------
#     ExtUtils::MakeMaker  any     7.74
#     File::Spec           any     3.91
#     Test::More          0.96 1.302219
#     lib                  any     0.65
#     strict               any     1.13
#
# === Test Recommends ===
#
#     Module         Want     Have
#     ---------- -------- --------
#     CPAN::Meta 2.120900 2.150010
#
# === Runtime Requires ===
#
#     Module         Want     Have
#     ------------- ----- --------
#     Sub::Exporter 0.978    0.991
#     perl          5.012 5.040003
#     warnings        any     1.70
#
t/00-report-prereqs.t .. ok
Built-in function 'builtin::export_lexically' is experimental at /cygd
+rive/C/Users/somia/cygwin-perl-cpan/build/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001-
+0/blib/lib/Sub/Exporter/Lexical.pm line 134.
t/basic.t .............. ok
All tests successful.
Files=2, Tests=4,  8 wallclock secs ( 0.11 usr  0.53 sys +  0.86 cusr 
+ 6.84 csys =  8.34 CPU)
Result: PASS
(C:/ix/cygwin/bin/make test exited with 0)
CPAN::Reporter: Test result is 'pass', All tests successful.
CPAN::Reporter: preparing a CPAN Testers report for Sub-Exporter-Lexic
+al-1.001
CPAN::Reporter: sending test report with 'pass' via Metabase
No history written (no histfile specified).
Lockfile removed.
  RJBS/Sub-Exporter-Lexical-1.001.tar.gz
  C:/ix/cygwin/bin/make test -- OK

cpan>

[download]

In reply to Re: What is cpan (the installer) doing prepending all these directories to the PERL5LIB path? by Intrepid
in thread What is cpan (the installer) doing prepending all these directories to the PERL5LIB path? by Intrepid

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