I had previously gone through the struggle of getting ActivePerl, MinGW and nmake to work together to compile XS modules under Windows. Even then, I had to use ExtUtils::FakeConfig to get it to work.

I wiped all that out, and gave CamelPack a try. It worked great!

1. Download the setup.exe, and then run it.
2. For the Dev-C++ pack, you can just install the "MinGW compiler system" option if you don't want the full IDE.
3. Then run cpan to get it configured.

That's it! You now have ActivePerl 5.8.7 that usable with CPAN (as well as PPM)! Hats off to Stephen Steneker for this outstanding contribution to the Perl community.