GMSGFMT variable not defined

[Marcin Simonides]

I'm the maintainer of multimedia/gnome-subtitles port. The new version 
adds language translations.

I have added USE_GETTEXT=yes to the port's Makefile.

There is a problem with building language translation files, variable 
GMSGFMT is not being defined and so the rule below doesn't work:

.po.gmo:
         file=`echo $* | sed 's,.*/,,'`.gmo \
           && rm -f $$file && $(GMSGFMT) -o $$file $<

I've checked with the program's aclocal.m4, it contains a line:

AC_PATH_PROG(GMSGFMT, gmsgfmt, $MSGFMT)

which looks right to me - GMSGFMT should be set to $MSGFMT if the 
program is not found. msgfmt is being recognised by configure *but* both 
MSFGMT and GMSGFMT are set to "nothing" in the program's po/Makefile.

There is a check for msgfmt (successful) in the configure's output, but 
none for gmsgfmt (the configure.am.

My question is: are there any knobs, settings, dependencies etc. I 
should use (the Porter's Handbook doesn't seem to mention anything like 
that) or is this probably the program's configure issue?

config.log available for request (unfortunately I have no idea how to 
analyze it, I just saw that INTLTOOL_MSGFMT is being set to correct path 
and G?MSGFMT to '').

This mail is also being sent to the author of the program.
Sorry that it's so chaotic, but I have no idea where to start looking 
for the root of the problem and what information to provide.
-- 
Marcin Simonides