If your program is really terminating, are you sure you are even finishing compilation? eval doesn't need one to throw an explicit exception or even a die statement in the enclosed code. The only thing it won't "catch" is an explicit exit statement buried somewhere in the enclosed code. Do you mean to say that Class::MixinFactory is calling exit? I searched Class::MixinFactory::Factory where the class(...) subroutine is defined and could find no such call.

Consider these two examples. The first terminates because of division by 0, but the second does not. Neither throw exceptions.

First example using a hard-coded division by 0 (compilation error before we even get to eval)

sub foo { 5/0; }
print "Before foo\n";
eval { foo 0; return 1; } or do { print "Oops!\n" };
print "Going onto other things\n";

# output
Illegal division by zero at ...
[download]

Second example using a variable denominator (runtime error)

sub foo { 5/$_[0]; }
print "Before foo\n";
eval { foo 0; return 1; } or do { print "Oops!\n" };
print "Going onto other things\n";

#outputs
Before foo
Oops!
Going onto other things
[download]

But even if eval { ... } doesn't work, you could still scan the symbol table for the packages involved in the mix-in after you call class(...) and then throw your own exception if you don't like what you see, i.e. if (scalar @aNotFound) { die ... }. I'm sure you've already thought of that, so perhaps you could explain why that doesn't work for you?

Best, beth

Update: clarification of timing of compilation error.