Last time (fairly recently) I installed ActiveState Perl 5.10, I first installed the whole MinGW suite of programs and utilities and only then AS Perl. During the install it automatically detected I had the MinGW C-compiler and
dmake and configured itself so it now uses
dmake and the C-compiler.
Still, not all is OK. Some modules seem to need a tool called dlltool which is missing and I haven't yet been able to find and install it. But even without this, most (for various definitions of the word) of the modules compile.
CountZero
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James