MiniVend is a complex system requiring the services of other complex pieces of hardware and software. While it can be very easy to install, you must look at the ongoing environment as well as just the initial installation.
perl -MCPAN -e 'install Bundle::Minivend'
and it should install all of the modules necessary except the DBM/DBI ones.
These modules are strongly recommended:
MD5
MIME::Base64
URI::URL
Data::Dumper (comes with Perl 5.005)
GDBM or DB_File (comes with most i386 Perls)
These are definitely recommended:
Storable
SQL::Statement
Bundle::LWP (contains MIME::Base64 and URI::URL)
These are nice to have but are not essential:
Business::UPS (comes with MiniVend)
Term::ReadLine::Perl
Term::ReadKey
You will need the DBI module if using SQL, along with the appropriate DBD module for your database.
The recommended packages for ActiveState Perl for Windows are:
MD5
MIME::Base64
LWP
The MiniVend setup program will attempt to use ppm.pl, the ActivePerl package manager, to install them at installation time.
fork() model which works so well with MiniVend.
A catalog designed on a Windows machine should just move over to a UNIX machine with no changes, so Windows might be a suitable development environment.
If you are located on a machine with many hundreds of domains, as sometimes happens with low-cost hosting operations, you can expect some problems. It is difficult to maintain a stable environment with that many users.
MiniVend will run about as well as the platform beneath it. It routinely runs for months non-stop in a stable environment.