What's the name of Perl distribution units?

Question

Package is a namespace. Module is a file with Perl code. cpan and cpanm are probably package managers. When I do cpanm XML::LibXML I install what exactly?

Answer 1

Distribution (or "dist" for short).

The name for a Perl distribution unit is distribution, so cpanm XML::LibXML installs the XML-LibXML distribution, because it includes the specified XML::LibXML module.

Example 1

Example 2

Note that linux distributions usually have a package manager such as apt or yum, and many Perl distributions are made available as packages for those package managers. Someone using those package managers might refer to Perl distributions as packages, but that's not standard Perl jargon.