[collectd] Need advice: Perl or Pyhon for writing plugins?

[O G]

Hello,
 
My team and I are interested in writing a plugin that cleans old collectd-generated files/logs (so we don't have to rely on an external config/tool like logrotate to clean up after collectd).  We've written such a plugin in Java, but discovered that Java plugin support is not included in all/many collectd packages out there, so we can't count on this working for all Linux distros, for example.
 
Thus, we are now considering writing this plugin in either Perl or Python.
 
So our questions are:
 
1) Is either Perl or Python plugin support available in all collectd packages or at least collectd packages the most popular Linux distros use?
 
2) Should we use Perl or Python for this - are they equal in terms of capabilities, limitations, and being updated with every collectd release?
 
Any help would be *greatly* appreciated.
 
Thanks,
Otis