Arg. I just tried with my real code running perl 5.8.8, and it does actually a difference : use base 'Exporter' works, use Exporter doesn't (??!?!?). The module is absolutely trivial : 
package DBtools;

use strict;
use warnings;

use DBI;
use Exporter;

our @EXPORT=qw( dbconnect );

#sub definition
sub dbconnect {
    my $config = shift;

    my $dbh = DBI->connect(
        'DBI:'
          . $config->param('dbdriver')
          . ':dbname='
          . $config->param('dbname')
          . ';host='
          . $config->param('dbhost'),
        $config->param('dbuser'),
        $config->param('dbpassword'),
        { PrintError => 0, RaiseError => 1, AutoCommit => 0 }
      );

    return ($dbh);
}

1;

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I'm going to stick with "use base" for now :/

In reply to Re^5: "use Foo.pm" twice from inside different packages... by wazoox
in thread "use Foo.pm" twice from inside different packages... by wazoox

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