Perl is required?

[Stephen L Moshier]

Trying to build gcc on a sparc-solaris drew this failure.
Is perl a requirement now?  How do we know what version of perl will work?

perl ../ccdir/gcc/../contrib/texi2pod.pl -D gcj <
../ccdir/gcc/java/gcj.texi > \
java/gcj.pod
(pod2man --center="GNU" --release="gcc-3.1" --section=1 java/gcj.pod >
java/gcj\
.1.T$$ && \
        mv -f java/gcj.1.T$$ ../ccdir/gcc/java/gcj.1) || \
        (rm -f java/gcj.1.T$$ && exit 1)
Can't locate Pod/Man.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
/loc/lang/perl5.004_04/lib/sun4\
-solaris/5.00404 /loc/lang/perl5.004_04/lib
/loc/lang/perl5.004_04/lib/site_per\
l/sun4-solaris /loc/lang/perl5.004_04/lib/site_perl .) at
/p/0/smoshier/solaris\
bin/bin/pod2man line 16.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at
/p/0/smoshier/solarisbin/bin/pod2man line \
16.
make[2]: *** [../ccdir/gcc/java/gcj.1] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/p/0/smoshier/gcc/build/gcc'
make[1]: *** [stage1_build] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/p/0/smoshier/gcc/build/gcc'
make: *** [bootstrap] Error 2