dave_the_m,
Ok - I can see it now plain as day "it is autogenerated when perl is built". For some reason, my brain read that as "the blanks are filled in when perl is built but the template is already there" and not as "the module doesn't exist before the actual build process". This is an AS problem not a Config.pm issue. Thanks for your help even though your clue stick didn't appear to be working at first.