A recent client was extremely frustrated when an executable did not work on one of their target machines even though it passed all tests on mock target machines. I added an additional runtime check -c to the pp call and that fixed the problem.

you can install PAR via cpan. pp will be a part of the install.

I myself would like to see a list of issues or problems that people have had with pp. I'm using it in a similar admin centric tool dev way that I anticipate you could be using it and it is working well for me. You should explicitly declare your use of modules at the top of your script, especially if you are using dbd modules rather than just load them within DBI.

After several Days of working this out, I finally got it to work. The finished result is below. Thanks for Perl Monks for the ideas from this thread. Wouldn't have been able to do it without you!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

# get the path to the library
use Config;
my $libpath = $Config{privlib};

# force CPAN::FirstTime to not default to manual
# setup, since initial CPAN setup needs to be automated
system("perl -pi -e\'\$. == 73 and s/yes/no/\' $libpath/CPAN/FirstTime
+.pm");

# initialize the Config.pm file
use Env;
$ENV{PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT} = 1;
require CPAN;
require CPAN::FirstTime;
CPAN::FirstTime::init("$libpath/CPAN/Config.pm");
delete $ENV{PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT};

# undo the change
system("perl -pi -e\'\$. == 73 and s/no/yes/\' $libpath/CPAN/FirstTime
+.pm");

# read in the Config.pm file
open(CONFIGFILE,"<","$libpath/CPAN/Config.pm");
my @lines = <CONFIGFILE>;
close CONFIGFILE;
# ..delete it
unlink "$libpath/CPAN/Config.pm";
# ..and then write it back out, replacing the line with the empty arra
+y urllist with a filled in array
open(NEWFILE,">","$libpath/CPAN/Config.pm");
foreach(@lines){
    if($_ =~ m/urllist/){
        print NEWFILE "  \'urllist\' => [\'http://ppm.activestate.com/
+CPAN\', \'http://cpan.perl.org\'],\n";}
    else{
        print NEWFILE $_;}}
close NEWFILE;

# install the packages
CPAN::install('SOAP::Lite');
CPAN::install('XML::Simple');

1;
[download]

Update: I've since discovered that I prefer cpanm

Using your code as a starter, here is what I'm using. I think it's a bit simpler not having to rewrite the FirstTime.pm file:

########################################
# Get CPAN::Config.pm initialized
export PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 PERL_MM_NONINTERACTIVE=1 AUTOMATED_TESTIN
+G=1

perl <<'EOT' || exit
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

# get the path to the library
use Config;
my $libpath = $Config{privlib};

# force CPAN::FirstTime to not default to manual
# setup, since initial CPAN setup needs to be automated
{
  local @ARGV = "$libpath/CPAN/FirstTime.pm";
  my @source = <>;
  $source[72] =~ s/\byes\b/no/ or die "Could not auto configure CPAN";
  eval join('', @source) or die "Error executing CPAN::FirstTime: $@";
}

CPAN::FirstTime::init("$libpath/CPAN/Config.pm");

delete $CPAN::Config->{links};
$CPAN::Config->{auto_commit} = '0';
$CPAN::Config->{check_sigs} = '0';
$CPAN::Config->{halt_on_failure} = '0';
$CPAN::Config->{make_install_make_command} = '/usr/bin/make';
$CPAN::Config->{mbuild_arg} = '';
$CPAN::Config->{mbuildpl_arg} = '';
$CPAN::Config->{mbuild_install_arg} = '';
$CPAN::Config->{show_upload_date} = '';
$CPAN::Config->{tar_verbosity} = '1';
$CPAN::Config->{trust_test_report_history} = '0';
$CPAN::Config->{use_sqlite} = '0';
$CPAN::Config->{yaml_load_code} = '0';
$CPAN::Config->{urllist}
  = [q[ftp:...your list.../], q[http://...your list...]];
$CPAN::Config->{connect_to_internet_ok} = '1';
$CPAN::Config->{perl5lib_verbosity}     = 'v';
$CPAN::Config->{prefer_installer}       = 'MB';
$CPAN::Config->{build_requires_install_policy} = 'no';
$CPAN::Config->{term_ornaments}         = '1';
$CPAN::Config->{mbuild_install_build_command} = './Build';

mkdir ".cpan/CPAN" or die "Can't create .cpan/CPAN: $!";
CPAN::Config->commit(".cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm");

CPAN::install('Bundle::CPAN');
#CPAN::force('install', '');
CPAN::install('JSON');
CPAN::install('JSON::XS');

exit 0;
EOT
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