Re: Bug#353435: Patch for gettext.m4 to remove superfluous operations (fwd)

[Bruno Haible]

Hello,

Ron <address@hidden> wrote:
> The first hunk avoids calling AM_NLS twice.  It could possibly
> even be simply removed there, as it is already AC_REQUIRED by
> AM_PO_SUBDIRS, which itself is required in the lines just before
> the first hunk starts.  I'll leave that as an upstream call,
> this patch fixes the immediate problem.

Thanks, I've applied the first hunk like you suggested.

> The second hunk is just an extension of the first, removing
> excess output from the configure run.  All the information
> given there is already reported by code above in the same
> macro.  It only sets the gt_source variable, which is not used
> anywhere else.

This "excess output" is desired. The previous configure messages
("checking for GNU gettext in libc", "checking whether to use NLS",
"checking for GNU gettext in libintl" etc.) all check for some
partial bits of information. A decision is then made where to take
the gettext() function from. This decision is a complicated combination
of the previous pieces of information. It helps me while debugging the
error reports from people on various platforms to see this final choice
printed explicitly.

You might think that

++> checking for GNU gettext in libc... yes
++> checking where the gettext function comes from... libc

is redundant. It is not. There are cases when a GNU gettext() function
is found in libc but will not be used (such as when the configure.ac
requests some features that the function in libc doesn't have, or when
--with-included-gettext was given on the command line).

Bruno