I have come up with a scheme that I now use for shipping binary .so files without requiring Inline.pm at all, and without requiring any manual steps. I was wondering if people (specifically ingy people) would be interested in incorporating it into a new release.
I sketched the scheme out at <http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=340881>. I can explain further, and attach my actual files, but I won't bother unless there's interest.