[Bug-gnulib] Re: requirements of 'getopt' module

[Simon Josefsson]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> getopt: depends on gettext which adds ~15 additional files even if I
>> don't use gettext.
>
> getopt is about parsing command line arguments. And they come from a user,
> even when used in your library, right? If getopt didn't use gettext, the
> error message comes out in English. And what shall an average Chinese or
> Japanese user do with an English error message?

You are right.  The function is documented to output errors on stderr,
and in that case they should of course be internationalized.

The background was slightly embarrassing: I needed getsubopt, not
getopt.  I thought they came from the same package.  Looking through
Shishi, I can't find any definition of getsubopt, but the package work
on 20+ platforms so it seems getsubopt is widely implemented.
Interestingly, there is no getsubopt man page on my Debian system.
I'll remove getopt from my dependencies...

> So, yes, it's on purpose that getopt uses gettext, and this may force you
> to link your library with -lintl on some systems.

Doesn't the m4 macros disable NLS if gettext can't be found?  My
package require -lintl anyway, so this is mostly a theoretic
question...