You said it works .. but you are filing a bug report?
What works is references to subroutine in not-loaded packages.
Bug report against Class::Load, which refuses to load packages after such referencing (thanks that I still have "require" working).
is this good practice or is it a bug?
Exactly. I think those are more probable alternatives.
Referencing a not yet loaded module in order to trigger loading on demand might be a great practice for saving on load time and memory requirements
I am not asking about such references in general, only about
\&NotYetLoadedModule::mysub(); vs
sub { &NotYetLoadedModule::mysub };