Re: Build failures on Ubuntu due to gettext

[Carles Pina i Estany]

Hi,

On Dec/07/2009, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 08:14:08PM +0000, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:

> > a) It's a bit of false security because it's not fixing the case of file
> > normal/menu_text.c, line 191 (search the string "Use the %C and %C keys
> > to") or menu_text.c line 374 (search for "The highlighted entry")
> > (I agree that it's better than before... but not very solid)
> 
> Forget security, in this case; let's just think of it as a way to avoid

Ok, I'll forget about security (even when the name is not helping to
forget about security :-) )

> > b) How would you translate and handle:
> > grub_printf (_("Hello %s"), name);
> 
> -Wformat-security doesn't interfere with that. As its documentation
> says:
> 
>   At present, this warns about calls to `printf' and `scanf' functions
>   where the format string is not a string literal and there are no
>   format arguments, as in `printf (foo);'.

I see now (not before)

> > Using any different number of %X from msgid and msgstr ishalting
> > msgfmt (so, if msgid contains 1 %s and 2 %d, msgstr 
> > has to contain the same)
> 
> That only works for strings with the "c-format" attribute, which
> xgettext only applies (and should only apply) to msgids that contain
> "%". It helps for the string you mentioned earlier with %C in the msgid,

right. Actually I was expecting that all strings in a C file would
has c-format, but it's not the case:
----
#: normal/menu_entry.c:840
#, c-format
msgid "Possible %s are:"

#: normal/menu_entry.c:1003
msgid "Booting a command list"
----

And confirmed: if the translator adds %C in the second string
("Booting a command list") msgfmt -c is not complaining.

So I would apply your patch, after understanding that it's only for
strings that doesn't have any %C (and in my opinion xgettext could
add the c-format if it's in a C file, but we will not discuss it here
now :-) , I guess that in some cases would not be correct)

Your patch conflicts with my one (Subject: gettext: grub_printf_ and N_)
but it's not a big problem. If you commit before I would adapt
my one, else I would adapt your one. 

-- 
Carles Pina i Estany
        http://pinux.info