Re: [PATCH] AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) disables NLS

[Aharon Robbins]

Greetings. Re this:

> Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 20:07:15 +0300
> From: Sergey Poznyakoff <address@hidden>
> Subject: [PATCH] AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) disables NLS
> To: address@hidden, address@hidden
>
> Hello,
>
> Using AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) with gettext version 0.14.4 and later
> will in some circumstances disable NLS altogether. In particular, this
> happens in GNU awk 3.1.4. Its configure.ac contains:
>
> dnl initialize GNU gettext
> AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
> AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.14.4])

That's funny. My sources for gawk 3.1.4 say:

        AM_GNU_GETTEXT([no-libtool], [need-ngettext])
        AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(0.14.1)

So, I'm curious where you got this version of gawk?

> Now, checking for LC_MESSAGES occurs in gettext-runtime/m4/gettext.m4,
> in defun AM_INTL_SUBDIR. This function is called from AM_GNU_GETTEXT
> only if variable gt_included_intl equals to `yes', which in turn
> occurs only if the first argument to AM_GNU_GETTEXT is not `external'.
>
> Thus GNU awk and any programs using an approach similar to that of gawk,
> are effectively distributed witout NLS support.

This should be true only on systems where gettext has not been installed
as a generally available library.  The general practice seems to be moving
towards not including gettext in GNU packages, which suits me; it makes
my distribution smaller.  And for 3.1.5 I will in fact use gettext that way.

> Proposed is a patch to gettext-runtime/m4/gettext.m4 that moves checking
> for LC_MESSAGES to AM_GNU_GETTEXT (see attachment).
>
> Regards,
> Sergey

Bruno, can you let me know yea/nay as to whether to apply this patch in gawk?

Thanks,

Arnold