Dang - I'm on Ubuntu LTS, so didn't know it had been removed. Thanks for letting me know.
I guess I have three options:
1. Learn C and maintain it myself (thus get it back into the distros)
2. Write my own "clone" in my own choice of language
3. Use something else
Luckily, having picked a format that's widely supported, three is at least an easy interim option until I can decide whether I want to do 1 or 2...
Good luck finding something to solve your problem.