view release on metacpan or  search on metacpan

lib/App/installguide/hosted.pod  view on Meta::CPAN

Change them to something like the following.

  'build_dir' => q[/home/username/.cpan/build],
  'cpan_home' => q[/home/username/.cpan],
  'histfile' => q[/home/username/.cpan/histfile],
  'keep_source_where' => q[/home/username/.cpan/sources],
  'makepl_arg' => q[PREFIX=/home/username],
  'make_install_arg' => q[],
  'mbuildpl_arg' => q[install_base=/home/username],

Then fire up the CPAN shell and install something. Then verify that it installed.

   # perl -MCPAN -e shell
   cpan> install App::Options
   cpan> exit
   # find ~/lib -name Options.pm -print
   /home/username/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/App/Options.pm

Yay. Success. We used the CPAN shell to install modules into our private perl
library directory.