I'm working on semi-embedded system right now, and perl is not something I want to pull into it. Attached patch makes use of perl USE flag, and disables perl support if that flag is not set.
Created attachment 43799 [details, diff] elimitate dep on perl
Dropping the perl dep isn't possible, as some of the support scripts supplied by the Apache 1.3 packages are perl scripts, and thus require it.
as #2 said perl is required by support scripts both in 1.3 and 2.0
Closing.