As the binary API and featureset between major Perl version changes, this is not possible in general, think of the Unicode chages introduced in 5.8. In theory, this should be possible for minor Perl version changes, and in practice, this seems to hold true for the 5.8.x series save 5.8.1. In general though, you will want to either rewrite your Program in Perl, so that it runs on whatever Perl is installed, or launch Perl as a separate process, so you can run whatever Perl you need. You can also look at the various methods to package Perl - the most current version is PAR. This will put the onus of packaging the program and compiling the Perl on you, but that's the price you pay for delivering one package.