Re: Cygwin Package gettext 0.22

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Brian,

> Attached are the latest Cygwin patches applied to the "native" Cygwin build 
> of 
> the latest gettext.
> It would be nice if you could ever find some time to consider these, and 
> apply 
> or make these (or equivalent changes) part of your sources.

... and for those that I don't consider, I will tell you why I find that they
are bad ideas. :)

> Cygwin has dropped some Windows compatibility, unsupported Windows versions, 
> and 
> 32 bit support, while still providing as much Windows interoperability as 
> possible

Understood.

> gettext-0.22-gettext-tools-gnulib-lib-localename-c.patch
> gettext-0.22-gettext-runtime-intl-gnulib-lib-localename-c.patch
> gettext-0.22-gettext-runtime-gnulib-lib-localename-c.patch

The code that you are disabling does the following:

  * When the user has set their language preferences in the Windows Control
    Panel,
    and in Cygwin they do not set any of the environment variables LC_ALL, LC_*,
    LANG,
    and the program calls setlocale(LC_ALL,"") — which is what most
    internationalized programs do —,
    then localename.c would use the language preferences from the Windows
    panel.
    POSIX allows this.
    Isn't that what the user wants? Why do you disable it?

  * Support for per-thread locales.
    The unit tests gettext-tools/system-tests/intl-thread-[123] probably fail
    with your patches. No?

  * Ignoring a dummy value of LANG, set in ~/.profile.
    Why should a user explicitly have to *remove* some statements that Cygwin
    installer has put there, in order to get internationalization working?

> gettext-tests-cygwin.patch

These changes indicate some bugs, introduced in localename.c (above).

> gettext-0.22-no-woe32dll-m4-woe32-dll-m4.patch
> gettext-0.22-no-woe32dll-gettext-tools-configure-ac.patch

I use the reliable way of building shared libraries on Windows. See my writeup
at https://haible.de/bruno/woe32dll.html and the file gettext/m4/woe32-dll.m4 .

If you decide to activate another, less reliable, way of building Cygwin
binaries, that's your responsibility.

> gettext-0.21.1-autopoint-V.patch

I decided to not enable this code, in 2002, because it is dangerous.

The documentation
https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/autopoint-Invocation.html
explains how the 'autopoint' program is meant to be used. I don't see the
point of adding an option to make it work differently.

> gettext-0.21.1-cygwin-ftm.patch

It could be that this one is useful. Can you point me to the original report,
please?

> gettext-0.22-disable-libtextstyle.patch

No comment.

Bruno