Greetings Monks!

I'm devising a process to distribute modules to target machines that do not have compilers (aka production servers). I'm part way there, as I can: (a) build modules as a regular user, (b) tar/gzip the installation directory and then (c) unroll it on the destination machine (over simplified, but you get the gist). I have done this succesfully with Net::SSH and its myriad dependencies. By the way, these are all Solaris 8 servers running Perl 5.8.x.

My question concerns building modules that are already installed (like under /usr/local/lib/perl5...) but don't exist on the deployment target. I can't necessarily remove these modules once they are installed by the root user.

When I do "make install" in step (a) above, I get something like "Crypt::DSA is up to date", and I can't do the install into my target directory. Is there a way to tell the CPAN module NOT to look for certain modules in the standard module paths? I do need to be able to find the core modules, so I can't ignore the whole path.

Am I stuck with doing the installs from the .cpan/build directories and pre-pending environment vars to the "perl Makefile.PL" call? Thanks!