RonW++ Thanks for replying. You have it right. Mostly I wouldn't ask but I know that at least one platform and several perl configurations fail to install Archive::Zip even though for now it is the preferred module to implement. The conundrum is how to succeed in the face of an imperfect module dependency.
I was afraid that might be the answer. I'm planning on running some tests in a branch and see what I can get to happen in Travis-CI but I'm afraid it might take a hack on the cpan or cpanm apps to accomplish what I want. I will post to this thread as I have results but I have to get the test suite and module ready first so it will take several days before I know what won't work for sure.