Now that Andreas is actively working on CPAN.pm and taking patches, it's tempting to add that to CPAN.pm.
my $make = $Config{make} . $Config{_exe};
my @path = split $Config{path_sep}, $ENV{PATH};
unless ( grep { -x File::Spec->catfile( $_, $make ) } @path ) {
# alien download and install
}
-xdg
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