Re: gettext 0.11 maintainer changes

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Berry writes:
> Not exactly a bug, but I suggest that the NEWS file for gettext mention
> that the maintainer now needs to create two new files po/LINGUAS and
> po/Makevars

Thanks for the suggestion. The NEWS file already points to the new
documentation sections po/LINGUAS and po/Makevars.

> cp <srcdir>/gettext-0.11/po/Makevars .

That will not work in general. po/Makevars needs manual editing; this
is what gettextize recommends when you run it.

> Perhaps gettextize should do this, or at least warn if the files are not
> present?

gettextize tells to create po/Makevars. And po/LINGUAS is still
optional; the old way to declare the languages in configure.in still
works.

> And then run automake, autoconf, configure by hand.  Otherwise the build
> fails because top_builddir is not defined in po/Makefile, since Makevars
> did not get read.

gettextize also tells this to the maintainer.

> Question: is there a recommended way to keep po/LINGUAS up to date?

Just add the language when you receive a PO file for a new language.
It doesn't happen that frequently.

> Now that it is determined at make-time instead of being embedded in
> configure.ac

The list of languages is still determined at configure time, not at
make time. Only its location has changed.

> it would seem easy to have a Rules-LINGUAS (say) file that
> did the above.

It would be painful, the same way as adding a subdirectory in automake
based projects is painful. And it wouldn't allow the maintainer to
store extraneous PO files, not intended to be distributed, in the same
directory.

> So far I haven't had any other compatibility problems.

It took a month of testing.

Bruno