You rang? :)

I think you're talking about a couple of different things here: a test runner framework and a build system. I also think the build for a large application with bundled dependencies is beyond the scope of module-oriented systems like Module::Build and MakeMaker. (I haven't looked closely at Module::Install.)

For the build system, you could start by taking the one from Krang. It's essentially the same as the one I described in the talk: automated build and install of locally bundled CPAN modules, Apache, and mod_perl into a non-system directory.

If that doesn't suit your fancy, you can probably get CPANPLUS to install local modules, although I haven't tried. I was also intrigued by pip. In either of those cases though, you will have to build something yourself to deal with the fact that many popular modules ask interactive questions during their installation. We handled this with Expect, and I think you could plug that into pip without too much trouble.

In terms of a test runner, we basically took what MakeMaker does for "make test" and modified it to suit our purposes. You may prefer to steal the Module::Build stuff there, or some combination of these and the prove command. Our issue with prove was the need to do some setup before running tests, but maybe you can find a clever way to integrate that with prove.

That's sort of a general answer. Is there something specific you're having trouble with? I do suggest taking a look at the Krang system if you're just wondering how this stuff I described looks in real life.