Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:
For diff-highlight in particular, you need to have a working perl, so
you'd probably want to at least wrap it with a NO_PERL ifndef. For
mw-to-git, you need to have MediaWiki::API installed, though I think the
tests at least notice this and skip everything if you don't.
I know I locally lack MediaWiki::API and saw the test skipped
everything. I do not know that would be true on a box without any
perl, though.