Re: some questions about gettext

[Bruno Haible]

Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:

> I'm moving GStreamer over to use gettext (I hope).  To properly learn
> everything I need I started creating test tarballs, which maybe could at
> one point serve as examples for other projects.  These tests use
> autoconf, automake, and gettext.
>
> As I understand, at this point I could either
> a) use gettextize ONCE, commit the result to CVS, and not run anything
> special from autogen.sh
> b) use autopoint from autogen.sh, just like all the other autotools.

This is correct.

> I would prefer to go with b) as a first try.  I set up a complete
> skeleton tarball with a simple source app that contains strings.

You can also look at the 'examples/hello-c/' subdirectory installed by
gettext 0.13.1.

> I have two problems with this skeleton tarball:
> a) There is no mechanism for me to put values substituted by
> config.status (Ie, AC_SUBST's) in Makevars.

Yes, this is not supported. All the values (DOMAIN, COPYRIGHT_HOLDER, etc.)
are expected not to change except by explicit maintainer action.

Alexandre Duret-Lutz and I are working on improvements that would solve
this problem.

> b) distchecking the tarball fails in the intl/ dir.  The nonsrcdir build
> fails to find the source files needed to build the objects.

Strange: intl/Makefile.in has a VPATH line that should take care of this.

Btw, VPATH is only supported with GNU make. Other 'make' implementations
don't support VPATH.

Anyway, if you use AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) you avoid carrying around
the entire intl/* sources with your package, and it also fixes this
problem.

> However, I'd like your opinion on the first two problems.  Also, I'd
> like an opinion on whether I should use autopoint, or stick with
> gettextize and commit huge chunks of generated code to CVS.

It depends on what tools the people who work off the CVS have installed.
If you want them not to need autoconf, automake, autopoint etc. installed,
you have to regularly commit huge amounts of autogenerated code to CVS.

Also remember: gettextize is a migration tool from one gettext version
to the next, whereas autopoint is for regenerating files automatically.

Bruno