Got it. Just for completeness, I will list the last problem and its solution.

I was getting the error below when tests were being skipped completely.

Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output

The solution was to use Test::More in t/thread.t, and add " plan(skip_all => $message); at the appropriate place, which was just before exiting the file, once it became known that all tests were to be skipped.

Thanks