Even though you have a stage servers `like production one', it'd be reasonable to check distributive in production environment before release is happened. I would call it `early` testing. Yes, of course, some subtle bugs will arise only in runtime phase, and unit test cannot cover it all, I say here about prerequisite unmet issues. In perl world unit tests and prerequisites checks are executed in standart way. One follows standard procedure, when installing things.

I put…

1. look up source directory
2. install dependencies into local directory
3. create distributive

1. find 'tagged' directory with maximum version number ( implementing install from subversion tags )
2. applying different patches (…