> it do get pretty out of hand after a while if you wanted to adopt any newer or stricter language features.

How does it get out of hand?

FWIW, I just do `use v5.32;` or similar to opt-in to everything from that version.

https://perldoc.perl.org/functions/use#use-VERSION

Of course, if you instead want to pick-and-choose features, then I can see the list growing large.