[bug-gettext] How GNU needs gettext to be for AM_GNU_GETTEXT?

[Felix Janda]

Hello.

Background:
Like glibc, the musl libc library provides gettext() functionality.
However the implementation of musl is not based on GNU gettext. AFAIK
musl currently provides the same basic gettext() interface as GNU
gettext and also implements the ngettext() type functions. The
<inttypes.h> format string functionality is however not implemented.

Many applications use the AM_GNU_GETTEXT() macro in their configure
script if they want to use gettext functionality. Of these many should
be already satisfied with musl's gettext() implementation, i.e. those
that don't request 'need-formatstring-macros'. However the relevant
test of AM_GNU_GETTEXT() tests also for the internal symbols
_nl_msg_cat_cntr and _nl_domain_bindings that musl does not have and
therefore the libc internal implementation will not be used. On the
other hand, by merely adding these symbols the test would be satisfied.


So my question is about the purpose of the AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro. Is it
really meant to exclude all alternative implementations? As I have
read, a goal is to exclude incompatible implementations:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2006-03/msg00011.html

However I do not know what exactly indicates a compatible or
incompatible implementation. Could AM_GNU_GETTEXT test for whether
the implementation is compatible instead of testing for internals?

Thanks,
Felix