Re: [help-gengetopt] Feature requests: gettext

[Lorenzo Bettini]

Tim Post wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 11:43 +0200, Lorenzo Bettini wrote:
> > Well, adding gettext functionalities to getopt would not necessarily 
> > require gettext dependence: though I don't know much about gettext, in 
> > the programs that used it there's always an #ifdef check to see whether 
> > gettext is available: if it's not a call to a gettext function, say 
> > foo(x) would reduce simply to x.
>
> In most scenarios, gettext is an external dso. So using getopt would
> mean a need to link against it (either dynamically or statically).
> Similar to how you inherit ncurses by using readline.
>
> However, getopt is part of libc(x), current use of it means you expect
> only to link against libc(x).
>
> A "hello world" program using getopt that normally depended only on core
> libc would then inherit a dependency on the gettext dso (and need to set
> flags accoringly).
>
> Changing it now would break a lot of builds.

OK, now I see what you meant :-)

> > Moreover, I'm pretty sure to remember that there are some 
> > implementations of getopt with internalization.
>
> Do you remember which one(s)? When bringing getopt to HelenOS userspace
> libc, I thought I looked at all of them .. but don't remember seeing
> gettext.

as I said, I can cross my heart on that... probably some years ago, but 
I don't remember where... so probably I confused it with another program...

> > this is just for discussion: I'm not a big fun of internalization, and, 
> > as you might have understood, I've never used it :-)
>
> I'm guilty of not using it much either. I do agree that an
> internationalized version should appear, but needs to be separate from
> what thousands if not hundreds of thousands of programs are currently
> using.

however, I've always thought that libc itself was internationalized...

> Its an interesting discussion :)

it is :-)

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Lorenzo Bettini, PhD in Computer Science, DI, Univ. Torino
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