I currently have no other platform to test the built app with so can't currently run anywhere else.

Yes I can do the other things you suggested however with my platform (angstrom on arm7), these things take a very long time so I was hoping to resort to this level of diagnostics as a last resort. The fact that this was working makes me think the perl installation and embedded perl app are fine, it's the system which has changed somehow.

Hold that thought ;-)