Re: conditional use of gettext

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

Vincent Torri wrote:
> in configure.ac, I use
> 
> 
> m4_ifdef([AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION], [AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.12.1])])
> m4_ifdef([AM_GNU_GETTEXT],
>     [
>      AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
>      po_makefile_in=po/Makefile.in
>      AM_CONDITIONAL([HAVE_PO], [true])
>     ],
>     [
>      AM_CONDITIONAL([HAVE_PO], [false])
>     ])
> 
> to check conditionnally if gettext m4 macro is installed or not. And it is 
> installed. But autopoint and aclocal are giving the following message:
> 
> Running autopoint...
> autopoint: *** Missing version: please specify in configure.ac through a line 
> 'AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(x.yy.zz)' the gettext version the package is using
> autopoint: *** Stop.
> Running aclocal...
> configure.ac:48: warning: macro `AM_GNU_GETTEXT' not found in library
> 
> What is wrong, here ?

'autopoint' recognizes the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION invocation only if it's
on a line of its own. So, you need to change your first line to:

m4_ifdef([AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION], [
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.12.1])
])

But what is exactly the point of this conditionalization?
  - You know that if your configure.ac invokes AM_GNU_GETTEXT,
    the installing person can pass --enable-nls or --disable-nls
    and thus choose to disable gettext at installation time.
  - After you ran 'gettextize', the po/Makefile.in.in and gettext.m4
    files will be part of your package. If they are not committed
    in version control, 'autopoint' restores these files. That is
    the entire point of the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([...]) declaration.
    So the m4_ifdef condition should always be true.

Bruno