For those who were interested in the problem, I was able to have the "new" code run in a "safe" way by forking... forking copies the symbol table and changes to it in the child process are not mirrored to the parent process.
Here's a quick snippet showing the method...
use Data::Dumper;
sub foo
{
if ( open(FROM, "-|" ) )
{
# PARENT
local($/);
my $output = <FROM>; # from the child
my $retval = eval "$output";
my @values = @$retval;
return $values[0] if( @values == 1 );
return @values;
}
else
{
# CHILD
unshift( @INC, "/path/to/NEW");
findAndRequire( 'My::Package' );
my @output = My::Package::func();
# local not really needed here, but who is counting
local $Data::Dumper::Purity = 1;
local $Data::Dumper::Terse = 1;
print Dumper( \@output ); # to the parent
exit;
}
}
sub findAndRequire
{
my ($pkgName) = @_;
$pkgName =~ s/::/\//g;
# search @INC for a file which matches
foreach my $dir (@INC)
{
my $file = "${dir}/${pkgName}.pm";
if( -e $file )
{
require "$file";
last;
}
}
}
# Call our "proxied" function!
my $output = foo();
local $Data::Dumper::Purity = 1;
local $Data::Dumper::Terse = 1;
print "OUTPUT = " . Dumper( $output );