[Catalyst] Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication under ActivePerl 5.8.7.813

[Will Hawes]

ActivePerl does not seem to have a PPD available for 
Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication. I tried to install via cpanp, but it 
failed:

Installing Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication
t\04_authentication....ok
t\05_password..........ok
t\06_user..............ok
t\live_app.............Weak references are not implemented in the 
version of perl at C:\Perl\site\lib/Catalyst.pm line 18
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\Perl\site\lib/Catalyst.pm line 18.
Compilation failed in require at t\live_app.t line 14.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t\live_app.t line 14.
t\live_app.............dubious
         Test returned status 2 (wstat 512, 0x200)

Given the importance of the Auth plugins to Catalyst as a whole, this is 
a bit of a problem for anyone on Win32. I can force install the Auth 
plugin of course, but on IRC it was suggested that the error is due to a 
bug in ActivePerl and could have much wider effects later.

Can anyone suggest a fix? The choice of OS is out of my control, but 
changing Perl distro is feasible provided there is a decent alternative. 
The choice seems to amount to just PXPerl, which uses cpan/cpanp for 
module installation. This would be nice, but unfortunately there are 
several modules (e.g. Template Toolkit) that have so far resisted all my 
attempts to compile them on Win32.