> since my repos are taking up more space than usual, what do you think about if I create a module to contain these test data? The module could create a requested file type for testing in other modules. It would be a large module itself but could decrease the size of others.
If you've got large test data used in multiple CPAN distributions, then splitting the test data into a separate distribution is one option.
Another option you could consider: you could reduce the amount of data shipped with each distribution, and then create author / release tests that use a larger data set, which would then not be included in the release to CPAN. If your dists are on github, you could include the large test data in the repo, just not in the CPAN tarballs.