on most systems, chances are you already have perl CPAN module installed and hence you can simply run
perl -MCPAN -e shell and install other modules on CPAN.

what if you dont have CPAN.pm itself set up yet?

The simple way is to install CPAN via yum e.g.

if you want to compile and set up CPAN on your own, follow steps below.

1> install of “ExtUtils-MakeMaker-6.64”
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib64/perl5/CORE/config.h’, needed by `Makefile’. Stop.

$ yum install perl-devel.x86_64
$ make clean
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make test
$ make install

2> install ‘CPAN’
[root@xxx CPAN-1.9800]# perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make test # this may fail, due to lack of some perl TEST related modules, but that is ok
$ make install

#give it a shot
$ perl -MCPAN -e shell

good!

3> still some other modules to install manually before CPAN module to work smoothly
Test::More
Perl::OSType
ExtUtils::CBuilder
Compress::Zlib
Compress::Raw::Bzip2
Algorithm::Diff
Text::Diff
IO::Zlib
Package::Constants
Archive::Tar
Module::Metadata
Module::Build
Digest::SHA
local::lib
Time::HiRes
XML::Parser
this may need expat-devel.x86_64