[Freeciv-Dev] Re: cvs compiling problem (PR#1128)

[Ben Webb <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Jason Short wrote:

> <snip: msgfmt not present; autoconf can't deal>
>
> Forcing users to install gettext doesn't bother me, but in that case why 
> do we have the rest of gettext in the intl/ directory?  Why not just 
> remove the whole thing, and do a full configure check for everything 
> that's needed?

        msgfmt is needed to build the .gmo files from .po files; gettext 
in intl/ uses these .gmo files to localize the code. So, on systems 
_without_ gettext, you need to provide the gettext code in intl/ and the 
.gmo files. This is fine for a "stable" distribution, which should include 
the .gmo files (try a "make distclean" in po/ - it doesn't delete the 
.gmo files) but awkward for CVS, since the .gmo files aren't text. So the 
solution is to not include the .gmo files in CVS, and require the user to 
have the msgfmt tool if they want to play with dodgy unstable code.

> I assume gettext was distributed with freeciv originally so as to make 
> the build process simpler.

gettext should be distributed with _any_ program that uses i18n.

        Ben
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