Perl 5 compiles and runs under VMS out of the box.  The current release is
5.001 (with a few postrelease patches); 5.002 is due out RSN.  I've got a kit
up for anon ftp at ftp://genetics.upenn.edu/perl5/perl5_001_yymmddx.zip
(yymmddx is 950419a at the moment) which has the post-5.001 bugfixes, as well
as several minor VMS fixes headed into 5.002, already applied.  It builds and
runs clean for me under VMS/VAX 5.5-2+VAXC 3.2 and VMS/AXP 6.0+DECC 4.0. 

                    Regards,
                    Charles Bailey

This is the updated Perl 5.001 release.