Re: Patch to fix working of autogen.sh

[Neil Jerram]

Kevin Ryde <address@hidden> writes:

> Neil Jerram <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> (Doing AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION causes autopoint to be run, which causes
>> the creation of a po subdir, with various boilerplate files, but I see
>> no harm in that.)
>
> An actual release doesn't have a po subdir yet does it?

Not sure, haven't tried a make dist yet.  I suspect that it would do,
and agree with you that it shouldn't!

> Can you make the autogen give what should go out the door?

That's the intention.

>  It might mean running the desired aclocal/autoconf/automake
> combination explicitly, instead of trusting autoreconf -- I'm
> guessing autoreconf is wrongly (for us) deciding it needs to
> gettextize.

OK, here's the full trail as I understand it.  My preference would be
to stick with autoreconf, as I assume the autoreconf guys have thought
more carefully about all the edge cases in this magic than we have.

We start off with two problems.

(1) autoreconf exits with error status, because it thinks that the
    expansion of AM_GNU_GETTEXT requires a definition of
    AM_INTL_SUBDIR, and AM_INTL_SUBDIR isn't defined.

(2) If you get past (1), one of the subsequent build steps (forget
    which one) fails because there is no config.rpath in the top level
    directory.

I understand that (1) is caused by an inconsistency between aclocal
and autoconf.  When aclocal decides what macros we need in aclocal.m4,
it correctly decides that we don't need AM_INTL_SUBDIR.  When autoconf
checks that we have all the macros that we need, it incorrectly thinks
we do need AM_INTL_SUBDIR.

In fact, we don't need the real AM_INTL_SUBDIR, so (1) can be fixed by
adding an empty definition for AM_INTL_SUBDIR.

For (2):

- config.rpath is apparently required for linking to the gettext
  library (which Guile genuinely needs, I believe), and it is
  installed, if not already present by autopoint

- autopoint only runs, however, if configure.in contains both
  AM_GNU_GETTEXT and AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION

- therefore I solved (2) by adding AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION ...

- ... but unfortunately, then autopoint also generates the po
  directory and boilerplate files.

So now, I believe there are two options.

1. Leave as is, and live with the po directory - probably even in the
   dist.

2. Remove AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION, so autopoint doesn't run, and
   instead add config.rpath to CVS and EXTRA_DIST.

We could make (1) more palatable by actually starting to
internationalize Guile's internal strings - so then we would really
need the po directory!

On the other hand, (2) has the benefit that it should allow the
nightly snapshot to build.  (I now know from the build machine's log
that the snapshot is failing because autopoint is not installed on the
build machine.)

>> +
>> +AC_DEFUN([AM_INTL_SUBDIR], [])dnl
>
> Put an enormous comment there if you would, otherwise it's bound to
> make everyone wonder what it's for.

Will do.  Let's just agree the whole solution first though.

> (Oh, and no need for the dnl on the end, autoconf prunes newlines out
> ok.)

Thanks, I'll remove it.

Regards,
     Neil