"Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
interacting with svn repositories with "git svn"). If you can
live without these, use NO_PERL. Note that recent releases of
Redhat/Fedora are reported to ship Perl binary package with some
core modules stripped away (see lwn.net/Articles/477234/),
so you might need to install additional packages other than Perl
itself, e.g. Time::HiRes.
It seems like it isn't an essential part though:
github.com/git/git/blob/master/INS...