Re: Bug#147624: gettext: xgettext seems vaguely unaware of pot extension (fwd)

[Mark Eichin]

> It's not clear what you consider inconsistent.

The texinfo doc consistently (following the "picture") refers to the
PO Template and .pot file as the output resulting from xgettext:

     |   .-----<--- PACKAGE.pot <--- xgettext <---'  

In reality, xgettext never outputs a .pot file -- by default it
outputs a domain-argument.po (or messages.po) file instead.  The
default output should be consistent with what the workflow document
says is going on -- at very least it helps a gettext user (ie. a
developer) know that he's in the right place.

To further clarify, I'm talking about the filenames, not the content;
xgettext does generate the "right" content for a .pot file, just
doesn't name it like one.

> Do you suggest that some functionality be removed from xgettext?

No, unless "generating the file with the wrong name" is the
functionality you mean :-)

I'll note that in this case, I've found (since reporting this) that I
can take advantage of the current behavior by having a make rule:

        xgettext -D . -D .. -d "$D" --keyword="N_" --keyword="_" 
--keyword="translate" -f POTFILES.in
        msgmerge --update $D.pot $D.po
        rm $D.po

so later xgettext runs only merge in new values,  so maybe it is
useful after all.  Really, though, -j should be doing this [there's
another outstanding bugreport on that though.]