My tip is - if your target is 5.8.3, then you best develop on 5.8.3 as well. There are no major differences between 5.8.3 and 5.8.8, but it makes things much more painless if you develop on the target platform already. If you're using a unixish OS for development, you can easily install the 5.8.3 release from backpan.perl.org - just make sure you install it into /opt/perl/5.8.3 - somewhere where it doesn't interfere with your system perl.