[pekk]

Nothing wrong with Ruby, but are there alternatives which do not require it?

[antidoh]

If I recall from previous experiments, vagrant's ruby is in its own directory, somewhat but not entirely compartmented off.

[mitchty]

Alternatives that require what exactly? Is Python out of the question? Perl? Clojure?

It is what it is.

[Argorak]

The vagrant installer vendors Ruby to avoid collisions, etc. I don't know any replacements.