# [[2025-06-18 Parts of Git have been written in Perl|Parts of Git have been written in Perl]] _Posted: 2025-06-18_ | #blog/2025/06 #git | [[Blog | Blog Index]], [[Linux Torvalds]] I have always been under the impression that [Git](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git) was written over a weekend of mad coding by [Linus Torvalds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds) in his favourite Linux kernel programming language C. While I was glancing over the [Git 2.5 highlights](https://github.blog/open-source/git/highlights-from-git-2-50/) I realized I was under a wrong impression. There has been a fair amount on [Perl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl) used in some of the commands, which the maintainers have been trying to take out over the years with the aim of wider compatibility. > Over the years, various parts of Git have been written in Perl, including some commands like [the original implementation](https://github.com/git/git/blob/5cde71d64aff03d305099b4d239552679ecfaab6/git-add--interactive.perl) of `git add -i` . These days, very few remaining Git commands are written in Perl. > > This version reduces Git’s usage of Perl by removing it as a dependency of the test suite and documentation toolchain. Many Perl one-liners from Git’s test suite were rewritten to use other Shell functions or builtins, and some were rewritten as tiny C programs. For the handful of remaining hard dependencies on Perl, those tests will be skipped on systems that don’t have a working Perl.