My company has long distributed perl with our software package (a common practice). We ship a semi-complete default build with a semi-full compliment of modules. For reasons that will soon be obvious, we've always avoided modules that need Config.pm and avoided distributing Config.pm as well. Of course, this is due to the fact that if we build on machine A, package up the perl install and it's installed on machine B, then the Config.pm is invalid.

As with most things in software, this seemed like a good idea until it wasn't. Now I need to use a module that does require Config.pm (actually I need a module that needs a module that needs a module that needs a module that needs Config.pm - LWP::Simple->IO::Socket::INET->IO::Socket->IO->XSLoader->Config, for the curious).

I have been trying to find a way to build out a Config.pm on the fly (without doing a full compile and install, which is verboten). I could even see just building a partial Config.pm with only those items I need in it, which would seem to be a good idea on the surface since I could avoid items of great potential conflict. The problem with the partial Config.pm is that I've not yet determined how many of those items I need are likely to be in conflict on similar plaforms (I can live with one per platform {Solaris, Linux, AIX}, but one per version {Solaris8 vs Solaris9} would a large amount of work). I know I could brute force build out a bunch of Config.pm files and then use tricks to call the right one, but that's a lot of overhead up front and is still not garunteed to work in every case.

Ideas?

Thanks