Re: automake/338: AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) support

[Charles Wilson]

Your patch seems to fix the problem I was observing -- with one final twist:

If you happen to be using this patch:
  http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/automake-patches/2002-May/000787.html
or, more generally, have automake installed somewhere other than under 
/usr/*, then this test in "<topdir>/tests/defs" will fail to find 
gettext.m4:

case $required in
  *libtool* )
    test -f "$aclocaldir/libtool.m4" || exit 77
    ACLOCAL="$ACLOCAL -I $srcdir/../m4 -I $aclocaldir"
    ;;
  *gettext* )
    test -f "$aclocaldir/gettext.m4" || exit 77
    ACLOCAL="$ACLOCAL -I $srcdir/../m4 -I $aclocaldir"
    ;;
esac

In order to coax the gettext[2].test to run, I had to comment out the 
'test -f $aclocaldir/gettext.m4" line -- once I did so, the tests 
succeeded.  However, AFAICT the current behavior is by design, so I'm 
not sure this qualifies as a bug -- especially as the patch referenced 
above is not in the main tree.<g>

Since, on cygwin, we use to patch referenced above(*), we can work 
around this...misfeature(?) in our releases.

--Chuck

(*)On cygwin, we have:
   /usr/autotool/devel/[bin,lib,share,include]
     (contains autoconf-2.53, automake-1.6, libtoolCVS)
   /usr/autotool/stable/[bin,lib,share,include]
     (contains autoconf-2.13, automake-1.4p5, libtool-1.4.2)

In /usr/bin, we have wrapper scripts to intelligently select which
"tree" to use.  However, unless you pass '-I/usr/share/aclocal' EVERY
time you call aclocal, you'll miss the .m4 scripts that are installed by
other packages into the "standard location" of /usr/share/aclocal/. 
This includes gettext.m4.

So, the "dirlist" patch forces aclocal to look in the referenced 
directories immediately prior to looking in the "real" $aclocaldir, 
without user intervention or -I commands.  However, the simplistic test 
above (test -f "$aclocaldir/gettext.m4") will not take that into 
account, and will not find gettext.m4.

Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote:

> I've made the following patch for this.  Comments?
>
> The patch is against branch-1-6.  On HEAD you have to remove the
> scan_one_autoconf_file change (last chunk in the automake.in patch),
> and reindent a few things.
>
> tests/gettext2.test corresponds to Chuck's report.  (Except that
> po/ is still required.)
>
> tests/gettext.test another error I found while writing this patch.
> Because of a strange usage of Perl's grep, the error messages about
> po/ or intl/ would never be printed.  (At least here.  Since Chuck
> has seen these errors, maybe it depends on Perl's version.)
>
>
> 2002-07-17  Alexandre Duret-Lutz  <address@hidden>
>
>         Fix for PR automake/338:
>         * automake.in (seen_gettext_external): New variable.
>         (handle_gettext): Conditionalize the intl/ check on
>         $seen_gettext_external.  Fix grep usage.
>         (scan_autoconf_traces, scan_one_autoconf_file): Set
>         $seen_gettext_external if `external' is passed to AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
>         * tests/gettext.test, tests/gettext2.test: New files.
>         * tests/Makefile.am (TESTS): Add gettext.test and gettext2.test.