I would try asking this question either on the Moose mailing list or #moose@irc.perl.org. I personally don't know the answer but people who hang out in those two places do. And unfortunately for you, I am really the only one of the Moose code team that hangs out here on Perlmonks.

Thanks. I finally figured it out. The trick is in when init_meta is called. This code works:

package TestMooseExporter;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Indent = 1;

use Moose ();
use Moose::Exporter;
use Moose::Util::MetaRole;

Moose::Exporter->setup_import_methods(
    with_meta => [qw(
        hello
    )],
    also => "Moose",
);

sub hello {
#    print Dumper($_) for @_;
    print $_[0]->{package};
}

sub init_meta {
    shift;
    my %args = @_;
    Moose->init_meta(%args);
    Moose::Util::MetaRole::apply_base_class_roles(
        for   => $args{for_class},
        roles => ['TestRole'],
    );

    return $args{for_class}->meta;
}

1;
[download]

However in a class that uses this, the role is not applied until after the class compiles. So my test code which tried to call a function inside of the module failed to find the role applied. But if I wait and look for methods later, it all works.