You might also want to take a look at the CPANPLUS module. It has a compatibility mode for CPAN.pm, plus it does a whole lot more like automatically reporting test to CPAN testers. The docs mention that it is scheduled to take over CPAN.pm's duties in 5.10 so the time spent learning anything new will not be wasted.

And it's invoked nearly identically to CPAN: 

perl -MCPANPLUS -e 'shell'

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In reply to Re: How to set up CPAN shell by drewbie
in thread How to set up CPAN shell by Nalina

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