... but something that creates such redundancy by bunding another Perl compiler with every single executable just doesn't really cut it, particularly since it really cuts against the grain for developers who spend so much time trying to eliminate redundant code.

The issues are quite different: in one case you just waste disk space (maybe as much as a couple mp3's) and maybe a little memory/performance during parallel execution of different programs (since the executables are different and the OS can't cache/share anything); on the other hand, redundancy in code causes problems in maintainability.

I have no direct experience of perl packagers, but I have used py2exe to pack python programs into self-contained folders (interpreter, libraries and all). When compressed into a self-extracting file, a typical small graphical client takes less than 3 mega (including wxPython). It's very easy to deliver to customers and doesn't require any effort other than "double-click on file, then double-click on executable abc.bat whitin expanded directory".

Antonio