Re: multiple locations of catalog files

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

[CCing bug-gnu-gettext where such questions should be discussed]

Andrew SG Rojek wrote:
> Just needed a second opinion on the location of the catalog files.
> 
> I'm installing GNU packages and Gnome packages in different locations
> and they both generate 'locale' files. Will this affect the  
> functionality of
> packages dependent on gettext and will gettext and the relevant
> packages still be able to find the catalog files in different  
> directories.

Every package will look up the compiled message catalogs in a subdirectory
of the LOCALEDIR which is specific to every package. You can specify a
--localedir argument to the configure script of most GNU packages. This
option was introduced precisely so you have control over where to store
compiled message catalogs. You can pass the same directory for all packages
or different directories - it's up to you.

> I was tempted to divert all the installed locale files to the GNU  
> directory
> where gettext is installed to keep them centralised.

This is possible. But the LOCALEDIR used at compile time must match. This
is not a change that you can make _after_ compiling and installing the package.

> The documentation
> does mention creating locale.alias to divert the search path.

Forget about locale.alias. It has no useful purpose any more nowadays.

> Just as a suggestion, would it be a possibility to consider introducing
> an environmental variable that point to locale directories,
> e.g. LOCALE_PATH, for a future release of gettext.

No, we won't do this. This would slow down the search for compiled message
catalogs at runtime without providing any advantage to the end-user.

Bruno