Re: [gettext] several suggestions

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Stepan,

> > 1)   -----------------------------------------
> > Why are these variables computed so late?  I think they could be
> > computed earlier.
>
> These computations are done at the moment when the contents of
> po/POTFILES.in in merged into po/Makefile.

Oops, actually it's the po/LINGUAS file which matters here.

> > 2)   -----------------------------------------
> > Alexandre has taught me that $(SRCS:.c=.o) is portable.
> > That means that po.m4 doesn't need to compute so many variables.
> >
> > Thus you can use:
> >
> > GMOFILES = $(POFILES:.po=.gmo)
> > UPDATEPOFILES = $(DUMMYPOFILES:.nop=.po-update)
> > PROPERTIESFILES = $(CLASSFILES:.class=.properties)
> > QMFILES = $(POFILES:.po=.qm)
> > QTCATALOGS = $(CATALOGS:.gmo=.qm)
> >
> > instead of computing and substituting these variables.
>
> Nice to know: it's portable and it's POSIX. A patch to exploit this
> $(VAR:.suf=.fux) syntax is welcome.

But actually some of the variables have $srcdir in them, and some don't.
And since $(addprefix...) is specific to GNU make, and there's no way to
make such computations work in POSIX make [since POSIX make has only macros,
no assignments], some part of the computation will have to remain in po.m4.
The value of moving only part of a computation from po.m4 to Makefile.in.in
is doubtful.

Bruno