I asked this before, and I still resort to the manual method. Why? Before I like to keep all my downloaded modules in the same directory, so I can scan their names when searching for them. Whereas most cpan modules want a repository style tree, where the modules are buried in those alphabetical named directories. It was still easy, because Perl dosn't need you to "make clean" before rebuilding. So when I needed to rebuild my modules for a recent upgrade to 5.8.8, all I needed to do was (in Midnight Commander) start at the top of modules directory,and as root, enter the individual modules directory, and do "perl Makfile.PL", followed by "make install". I could march thru 100 modules in about 30 minutes. Now this could easily be scripted. The only problem would be when a module needs a pre-requisite module, and issues an error. So you need to do it attended. But I found that most of the time, you can install the pre-requisite later, as long as it is in your list, so you can ignore them and install anyways.