Why don't you just write your tests to skip if the required module is unavailable? I have many tests that basically do:
my $can_run;
my $reason;
BEGIN {
$can_run = eval {
require My::Module;
require Some::Other::Module;
1;
};
$reason = $@;
};
use Test::More;
if (! $can_run) {
$reason ||= "no reason given";
plan skip_all => "Prerequisite module not found ($reason)";
exit;
} else {
plan tests => 42;
};
...
Also, I find the idea of "standard" amusing/confusing - does that mean that all modules currently using ExtUtils::MakeMaker will go out of existence or that people will hurry to Module::Build because nobody cares about compatibility with older versions of Perl anymore?