I believe python is required only for building the docs (html/man) as they are written in asciidoc. There are precompiled docs (git-manpages / git-htmlpages) in

I believe python is required only for building the docs (html/man) as they are written in asciidoc. There are precompiled docs (git-manpages / git-htmlpages) in the kernel.org git dir[1], so most often that isn't needed. [1]: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/ http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/ edit: Looks like there are a few importers written in python as well, but those are entirely optional.