From bugzilla bug 13467¹:
The modeline2c script is the only part of the Xorg server that requires Perl.
[This] is a simpler replacement that works with any normal AWK.
1] http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13467
Bug was posted by Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg@NetBSD.org>.
James Cloos