building without perl

I'm a bit confused as to what we're trying to support. While I was
poking around tonight, I notice that we have both
./src/backend/utils/Gen_fmgrtab.sh and
./src/backend/utils/Gen_fmgrtab.pl, ostensibly because:

# The reason for implementing this functionality twice is that we don't
# require people to have perl to build from a tarball, but on the other
# hand Windows can't deal with shell scripts.

However, you definitely can't build from a git (or, presumably, CVS)
checkout without perl, and in fact the error message leaves a good
deal to be desired. Configure succeeds, but then:

[...lots of output omitted...]
make -C ../../../../src/port all
make[5]: Entering directory `/home/rhaas/pgsql-git/src/port'
make[5]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[5]: Leaving directory `/home/rhaas/pgsql-git/src/port'
"" ./parse.pl . < ../../../../src/backend/parser/gram.y > preproc.y
/bin/sh: : command not found
make[4]: *** [preproc.y] Error 127
make[4]: *** Deleting file `preproc.y'
make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/rhaas/pgsql-git/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc'
make[3]: *** [all] Error 2
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/rhaas/pgsql-git/src/interfaces/ecpg'
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/rhaas/pgsql-git/src/interfaces'
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/rhaas/pgsql-git/src'
make: *** [all] Error 2

I've seen previous references to perl being a build requirement as
well, so I guess I'm a bit confused. Is there some tarball that is
built with just enough extra stuff in it to avoid the perl dependency?
And if so, how confident are we that we're solving a real problem
here as opposed to a hypothetical one? Admittedly, I tend to use
machines running relatively recent operating system versions, but I
think the last time that I ran into a machine that didn't have perl on
it was not more recently than 1994 (I'm guessing someone is now going
to tell me what a sheltered life I lead...).

...Robert