Re: gettext doesn't create .gmo files

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

Sebastian Dransfeld wrote:
> Have a project which uses gettext, and I have noticed a weird behavior 
> from the Makefile in po/. It does not create .gmo files if they don't 
> exist. It seems that the current Makefile only creates .gmo files if the 
>   .pot file is updated, or during 'make dist'. Is this intentional?

Yes, this is intentional. This minimizes the time that maintainers have
to wait on msgmerge to complete. Most maintainers don't care much about
internationalization and would not like it to get in their way.

> The problem is that I install from cvs. So sometimes people add new 
> languages. This adds a .po file and changes LINGUAS. These two events do 
> not trigger a build of the .gmo file which belongs

Yes, but you can force it by doing "make update-po", as documented.

> and is quit annoying.

What are the negative effects? Does it show an error message,
interrupting "make"? Or is it just "annoying"?

Bruno