I pass my configuration into the CGI::Application object. Of course, that change to operating everything during BEGIN is somewhat unusual as well. The perl interpreter running the parent's code doesn't reach INIT, CHECK or the normal runtime until the ->run call has completed. I wonder if that would cause problems for anyone or if fatal errors would interact poorly since to perl, this is all during the code-parsing stage.

PerlMonks::Summoner -> new
    (
     TMPL_PATH => TEMPLATEROOT . 'PerlMonks_Summoner/',
     PARAMS    => {
         encryption_key => ...,
         url          => ...,
         dbh          => undef,
         change       => undef,
         dbi_dsn      => 'dbi:Pg:dbname=perlmonks',
         dbi_username => 'perlmonks',
         dbi_password => '...', },
     )->run;
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At least do something with @_ during that import call.

sub import {
    (shift)->new->run;
}
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Anyway, I like the idea of removing the need for the use of an unclear idiom, and replace it with something much simpler. Liek this.

Unfortunately, now your script will run at compile time...