I've never had any problems with the redefine statements from CPAN on a similar setup. Then again, maybe I'm foolhardy?

When should I use

make
make test
make install
[download]

When you have a working make and C-compiler that will build Perl for you. I used to have Activestate Perl on Windows XP, but a few weeks ago I compiled Perl 5.8.5 from scratch to get access to Devel::Cover on windows. Had to fiddle around a bit, but I got it up and running with MinGW's C-compiler and dmake.

The incantation above can be used as a fallback in case CPAN doesn't work right out of the box. When I compiled Perl i had to install a few modules with the make/make test/make install routine before I managed to bootstrap CPAN. After getting the initial modules though, things worked fine. Normally, you shouldn't need compile modules manually.

Just (rambling) my $.02

Update: Fixed a typo and some bad grammar