This always strikes me as odd. "I want you to install MS Office on this machine, but without DLLs." That's basically what the requestor is asking for. Or maybe, "I want to see all those animations on the web, but on a machine without Flash or Java installed." Or even, "I want to run Excel on my toaster oven." The proper answer should be something along the lines of laughing at the requestor for a few minutes before calming down and asking, "You're kidding, right?" Feel free to adapt to your own personality - my personality is somewhat snarky, so it may not be in line with who you are. Under no circumstances should the answer be, "Uh, ok."

With our off-the-shelf software, we have some Java-based programs. We install Java with our software. Another of our products (not my department) use perl for some of their command-line tools. They install perl with their software. (Boy do I wish my department would go along with that ;-})

I'd suggest something along the lines of, "Oh, it doesn't have perl? Let's fix that, and then my scripts will work wonderfully." If they insist on not installing perl, then explain that you use perl like a DLL - and in the same way that Word wouldn't work without its DLLs, your scripts won't work without perl.

Way safer than introducing yet another item in the mix - an item you haven't been testing with for months.