Im not agree with you.
I have the same problem but I found in all cases the Make:Maker cant read well the Manifest files, and was making several test with several packages on slax using cpan or downloading the tar.gz package and traying run the Makefile.Pl but it cant process folders on the buil makefile process, it make problems with it tray to run make test and make install process
Im try to install the modules manually.