[Bug 234833] USES=autoreconf fails if a port uses gettext but user disables NLS port option

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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=234833

--- Comment #7 from Tijl Coosemans <tijl at FreeBSD.org> ---
autopoint updates all the gettext related build scripts in the work directory
so autoreconf can generate a configure script that works with the version of
gettext installed on the system.  Some bugs are also fixed by this, like old
config.rpath treating FreeBSD 10+ as FreeBSD 1.  That configure is called with
--disable-nls is not known by autoreconf so it always runs autopoint.  That
makes autopoint a genuine build dependency and USES=gettext-tools has been
created for exactly this case (see bug 194038, comment 0).  This solution is
clean, simple, no hacks required, has no impact on runtime dependencies of the
package, and is least likely to break when autotools or gettext are updated to
a new version.

The various autotools form a complicated tangle that few people actually
understand including upstream developers.  So there are projects where
--disable-nls doesn't work configure looks for gettext anyway and projects with
build scripts mixed from different versions of gettext or other autotools. 
It's just far easier to run plain autoreconf that runs all the tools than to
try to come up with hacks that work in all edge cases.  Sure, some ports may
not strictly need a particular autotool, but most port maintainers get this
wrong.  I don't know for sure of course but I suspect you don't really know
what all the consequences of AUTOPOINT=true are.  It *looks* like it works to
you but you don't actually know.  And you don't know if it will keep working in
the next version.  That's why I deliberately designed USES=autoreconf to be as
simple as possible (i.e. no things like AUTORECONF_ENV and AUTORECONF_ARGS) so
port maintainers would not be tempted to use hacks.  In the end it makes their
life easier and mine as well when I have to update one of the autotools.  So
please, just add USES=gettext-tools.

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