[sr #110435] autoreconf: recognize when AM_ICONV is used without the rest of gettext

[Bruno Haible]

Follow-up Comment #8, sr#110435 (group autoconf):

I think this bug should NOT be fixed.

The reason is that ideally, there should be one and only one tool responsible
for installing config.rpath in the developer's package when needed. It's
already bad enough that three(!) tools do this: gettextize, autopoint, and
gnulib-tool. This creates interdependencies between GNU gettext and GNU
gnulib, that fortunately are bearable because GNU gnulib changes are effective
immediately - no releases.

If we were to add a fourth tool (autoreconf), we would also have
interdependencies between GNU autoconf and GNU gettext. Since GNU autoconf
tends to have releases quite infrequently, roughly once every 3 years on
average, this would mean that some aspects of GNU gettext could be blocked for
several years. (There are also already interdependencies between GNU automake
and GNU gettext. We have been lucky that this affects only a warning and
nothing is blocked.)

It is better if this bug does not get fixed - this affects few users - than
that the development of GNU gettext be partially blocked for years.

The proper way to fix this would be for 'autoreconf' to invoke some program
(or shell script) that GNU gettext has installed. So that GNU gettext may
evolve even if there are no new GNU autoconf releases for N years. Much like
bash does with the bash completions: bash does not include completion logic
for a multitude of package, but rather it has a mechanism through which
packages can install their completion logic.


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[sr #110435] autoreconf: recognize when AM_ICONV is used without the rest of gettext

[anonymous]

Follow-up Comment #7, sr#110435 (group autoconf):

Yes, I have wrote in the first comment that the custom script which copies
config.rpath to current directory and then run autoreconf is a workaround.

I'm looking at autotools now again and seems that config.rpath is copied by
autopoint to current dir. But autopoint is called only when configure.ac uses
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION macro. But usage of AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION in
configure.ac cause that autoreconf (or its subprocess) installs gettext stuff
which are not required for non-gettext projects.

So I think that solution for this problem can be:
Use current autoreconf detection if calling autopoint is needed and call it.
If autopoint was not called and configure.ac use AM_ICONV macro then copy
config.rpath to current directory.


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[sr #110435] autoreconf: recognize when AM_ICONV is used without the rest of gettext

[Zack Weinberg]

Update of sr#110435 (group autoconf):

Priority: 7 - Release N (Desirable) => 3 - Release N+1
 Summary: autoreconf does not recognize AM_ICONV =>
autoreconf: recognize when AM_ICONV is used without the rest of gettext

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Follow-up Comment #6:

On further investigation it's not that simple after all.  An autogen.sh script
is written knowing exactly what is needed for a particular project, but
autoreconf needs to detect when a project needs this versus when it needs the
full autopoint treatment and when it doesn't need either, and that's
complicated enough by itself that I think this needs to wait for the next
release after all.  Still, knowing what to do is very helpful.

Bruno, re

> if new files (.m4 files or else) are needed as new dependencies of iconv.m4,
this method will not know about it

M4 dependencies should be taken care of by aclocal, shouldn't they?  I do see
that new non-M4 dependencies could be a problem.


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