RDepending on Perl itself

Writing correct dependency specifications is an art in itself. So, here's a small guide for Gentoo developers how to specify runtime dependencies on dev-lang/perl. First, the general rule.
Check the following two things: 1) is your package linking anywhere to libperl.so, 2) is your package installing any Perl modules into Perl's vendor directory (e.g., /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl/5.20.1/)? If at least one of these two questions is answered with yes, you need in your dependency string a slot operator, i.e. "dev-lang/perl:=" Obviously, your ebuild will have to be EAPI=5 for that. If neither 1) nor 2) are the case, "dev-lang/perl" is enough.
Now, with eclasses. If you use perl-module.eclass or perl-app.eclass, two variables control automatic adding of dependencies. GENTOO_DEPEND_ON_PERL sets whether the eclass automatically adds a dependency on Perl, and defaults to yes in both cases. GENTOO_DEPEND_ON_PERL_SUBSLOT controls whether the slot operator ":=" is used. It defaults to yes in perl-module.eclass and to no in perl-app.eclass. (This is actually the only difference between the eclasses.) The idea behind that is that a Perl module package always installs modules into vendor_dir, while an application can have its own separate installation path for its modules or not install any modules at all.
In many cases, if a package installs Perl modules you'll need Perl at build time as well since the module build system is written in Perl. If a package links to Perl, that is obviously needed at build time too.

So, summarizing:

eclass	1) or 2) true	1) false, 2) false
none	"dev-lang/perl:=" needed in RDEPEND and most likely also DEPEND	"dev-lang/perl" needed in RDEPEND, maybe also in DEPEND
perl-module.eclass	no need to do anything	GENTOO_DEPEND_ON_PERL_SUBSLOT=no possible before inherit
perl-app.eclass	GENTOO_DEPEND_ON_PERL_SUBSLOT=yes needed before inherit	no need to do anything