If you use *anything* other than pure vanilla, feature-free Perl you’ll need to include the distribution or build it.

There's no such thing as a pure vanilla, feature-free Perl. Perl's Configure is full of featuritis and hints, and some features may well not be turned on in your vendor's perl. If I need e.g. -DDEBUGGING on my platform, yes, I have to rebuild perl - but I rebuild it as close to the platforms procedures as possible, i.e. only altering that switch in the build process. Otherwise I would just be asking for problems - asking the platform for them, that is, not perl.