Installing Perl modules to a specific location

For our convenience, let's assign the base location to a variable: (This var isn't used by anything but the following commands. There's actually no need to export it.)

export PERL_BASE="/usr/local/perl"   # Or "$HOME" or whatever

Instruct ExtUtils::MakeMaker where to install: (This assumes $PERL_BASE doesn't include any shell metacharacters)

export PERL_MM_OPT="INSTALL_BASE=$PERL_BASE"

Instruct Module::Build where to install: (This assumes $PERL_BASE doesn't include any shell metacharacters)

export PERL_MB_OPT="--install_base $PERL_BASE"

Instruct Perl where to look for modules: (This assumes $PERL_BASE doesn't include :)

export PERL5LIB="$PERL_BASE/lib/perl5"

Instruct the system where to look for scripts: (This assumes $PERL_BASE doesn't include :)

export PATH="$PERL_BASE/bin${PATH:+:$PATH}"

Instruct the system where to look for man pages: (This assumes $PERL_BASE doesn't include :)

export MANPATH="$PERL_BASE/man${MANPATH:+:$MANPATH}"

All together:

export PERL_BASE="/usr/local/perl"
export PERL_MM_OPT="INSTALL_BASE=$PERL_BASE"
export PERL_MB_OPT="--install_base $PERL_BASE"
export PERL5LIB="$PERL_BASE/lib/perl5"
export PATH="$PERL_BASE/bin${PATH:+:$PATH}"
export MANPATH="$PERL_BASE/man${MANPATH:+:$MANPATH}"

Based on my own previous misadventures with local::lib, you should be able to set the location where modules are installed by setting INSTALL_BASE in PERL_MM_OPT, most likely by running a command similar to:

export PERL_MM_OPT='INSTALL_BASE=/usr/local/<path to modules>'

Alternately, if you're doing the Makefile/make/make test/make install process manually instead of using the CPAN toolchain, you can pass --install_base=/usr/local/<path to modules> as an argument to Makefile.PL.