Re: [bug-gettext] [PATCH] xgettext: new option --no-linenumbers omits line numbers

[Daiki Ueno]

Sorry for responding to an old mail.

Tommy <address@hidden> writes:

> We recently had the problem that line numbers in comments in our .pot
> file were causing a lot of noise in our git repository. Every time a
> source file changed, the next .pot file update would be full of
> changes to line numbers, obscuring the actual changes to translatable
> strings.
>
> At the same time, the file name in the comments is very helpful for
> our translators, so if possible we would prefer not to disable
> location comments entirely.
>
> Disabling the line number portion but leaving the file name seems like
> a very good solution.

[...]

> What do you think?

I agree that this feature would be useful.  However, as I replied at the
tracker[1], I feel the xgettext specific approach a bit inflexible and
it might cause inconsistency in the current options semantics, IMHO.

Now we have:

      --no-location           do not write '#: filename:line' lines
  -n, --add-location          generate '#: filename:line' lines (default)

in 9 msg* utilities in addition to xgettext.  How about extending the
--add-location option to have (optional) location specifiers?  For example,

'--add-location' implies '#: filename:line'

'--add-location=filename' implies '#: filename'

'--add-location=filename:line' implies '#: filename:line'

Comments and other ideas are welcome.

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?39792#comment1

Regards,
-- 
Daiki Ueno