The reason is so that CPAN can detect the dependencies automatically. As brilliant as CPAN is, it still can't parse human language well enough to understand the docs, no matter how blindingly clear they are. :)

There are modules to help with this maintenance, like Module::Depends::Intrusive and Module::ScanDeps.

In reply to Re^4: Properly expressing module prerequesites for CPAN by sgifford
in thread Properly expressing module prerequesites for CPAN by sgifford

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