Second that. I recently google-project-hosted a collection of bash scripts that I use to automate setting up my own local perl environment wherever I want.

Pedantically thorough one-shot catalyst sandbox installation, soon it will automagically set up demo apps too...

This is optimized for catalyst development, but if you edit install.sh and remove all the stuff related to catalyst, you should have an easy way to set up perl, update CPAN, add Module::Build. And maybe the tactics I use in terms of overly thorough backup of my environment, with easy aliases to help you on your way, could be of use as well.