Thankfully randyk has done most of the work for me. This gives me PPM, XML::Parser, eXpat and SOAP! All that needs to be done is running the command ppm set build %U3_DEVICE_PATH%\strawberry\ppm in the commandprompt.bat file (as noted here by syphilis).

Hmm is crazyinsomniac's PPM Repository still active. I'm getting a lot of 404s on the various links.

Now I need to figure out how to hack up ppd files so that it doesn't care about OS and Perl versions (quite so much) because of the portable nature of the stick I may need to mangle the ppd files regularly to overcome Windows inconsistancies.

Update: Yup, just edit the ppd file and update <ARCHITECTURE NAME="MSWin32-x86-multi-thread-5.8" /> to <ARCHITECTURE NAME="MSWin32-x86-multi-thread-5.10" /> and those ppd modules install. They even install into the Perl-onna-Stick and not the version installed on the host machine! Have to download and unpack the PPM package tarballs manually, but that's a minor irritation. I now have Gtk2 and Glib! Doh! make that I have Gtk2 and Glib that whine about perl58.dll not being available. Need to find Perl 5.10 PPM files.

can do search me!