Autoconf configuration?

[Simon Josefsson]

Hello.  I find the use of several files in po/ to configure gettext a
little cluttered.  Some ideas:

* If there is no po/LINGUAS file, how about defaulting to including
  languages for po/*.po?

* How about allowing the LINGUAS content to be specified from
  configure.ac?  For example:
AM_GNU_GETTEXT(external)
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(0.14.1)
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_LINGUAS(fr pl sr sv)

* How about moving (read: continue to support the current scheme, but
  also allow a new scheme) the LINGUAS content to Makefile.am, for
  packages that use Automake?  For example:
idn_PO = fr.po pl.po sr.po sv.po

* Most things in po/Makevars appear to be possible to populate with
  default values, removing the need for maintainers to store this file
  in CVS, and to manually copy it from Makevars.template initially.

* When using autoconf, defaulting to the AC_INIT bug report mail
  address for MSGID_BUGS_ADDRESS seem to promote better quality.
  Projects that don't want feedback from translators could disable it
  explicitly, instead of requiring people that want feedback from
  specifying it.

* If po/POTFILES.in doesn't exist, how about automatically generating
  it somehow?  At least for projects using autoconf + automake, the
  source files should be possible to figure out from the make files.
  That might not be perfect, but might work well enough for many
  projects if done well, thus simplifying the maintainer's burden.

* (More of a question, really.) Is it possible to stop gettext from
  modifying *.po files, that I keep in CVS?  It rewrites
  POT-Creation-Date every time I build my package, causing CVS
  conflicts.  I don't want to store *.pot in CVS because it is a
  generated file, is there no other choice?  I'm considering putting
  se.po.in, fr.po.in etc in CVS and use CONFIG_FILES on them to
  generate se.po, fr.po etc that gettext can modify to its own heart,
  to avoid seeing CVS conflicts.

Thanks,
Simon