The internal parser is retro compatible with old Clover revisions since r3250. This is possible because a check for the existence of any variable inside SETTING_DATA structure is performed before the call. Variables are all accessed using the label property of the Mirror class, so as a string.
Themes can be downloaded without git. The parser allows users to chose the Github user and the repository name, and so load themes from forks or any repo that has compatible directories structure (the repository must contains only themes, at first level).