Thanks Podmaster. I see now the problem is 5.8.0 on redhat, something I probably should have mentioned in the initial post. This is the first time I've had such an involved install in a unix environment.

From the makefile: 

### there's issues with redhat 9.0's stock perl -- they applied some
### custom patches on their 5.8.0 and it breaks use constant a => sub 
+{};
if( $^O eq 'linux' and -e '/etc/redhat-release' and 
    $] == '5.008' and (grep /Red Hat, Inc/, values %Config::Config)
) {
    print loc("
### IMPORTANT! ######################################################

You are using perl $] supplied by RedHat, who have applied custom
patches that break various perl modules, including this one.

You will have to migrate to a perl without these flaws. You could
do this for example by building a perl installation by hand. 
You can obtain the sources from www.cpan.org.

We're sorry for the inconvenience.

#####################################################################

    ") . $/;

    require 5.008001;
}

[download]
I wonder if this will cause other problems that would leave me better off developing somewhere else if the hosters won't upgrade, or if it's no big deal. (For all I know there could be other problems with a fresher version.) For now I am going to try installing catalyst without cpanplus.

In reply to Re^2: Can/should I run an upgraded version of perl locally, on a shared web server where I don't have root? by tphyahoo
in thread Can/should I run an upgraded version of perl locally, on a shared web server where I don't have root? by tphyahoo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.