intltool 0.15 and autoconf/automake

[David Hampton]

I've run into a problem when trying to compile the distcheck target
automatically generated by autoconf/automake.  This target builds a
distribution, unpacks it into a new directory, configures to build in a
separate directory from the sources, and then proceeds to make all the
source files and directories read-only.  At the end of a long sequence
of commands in this split directory hierarchy, the distcheck target
eventually invokes the distdir target in the po directory which invokes
the update-po target. 

The update-po target is written such that it appears to know about the
src/build split directory, but assumes that all directories are
writeable.  This is not true for the distcheck target, nor would it be
if the sources had been distributed on a CD rom or some other read-only
media.  The update-po target blithely changes to the source directory
and starts trying to move old files around and create new files.  A
similar problem also exists in the intltool-update program.  This
program assumes that the xxx.pot file and all the xxx.po files live in
the same directory.  At the moment, I don't see any clean way to fix
these programs.

Ths problem should be easily reproducable by building the distcheck
target on any application using intltool-0.15.

David

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