A section on gettext for the Porter's Handbook

[Yar Tikhiy]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 09:21:24PM +0200, Pav Lucistnik wrote:
> Yar Tikhiy p??e v po 21. 08. 2006 v 11:10 +0400:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I hoped I had learned something about using gettext in ports,
> > and felt I should write down a summary.  Here's what came out
> > of that -- a proposed section for the Porter's Handbook.  Its
> > HTML rendering is available there:
> > 
> > http://people.freebsd.org/~yar/porters-handbook/using-gettext.html
> > 
> > Remarks and corrections are welcome.  Thanks!
> 
> Not entirely convinced the section is needed at all. Anyway, here is
> some constructive criticism:

The constructive part is much appreciated. ;-)

> 1) Passing just LDFLAGS is not enough, you need also to pass
> complementary header paths in CPPFLAGS:
> 
> CONFIGURE_ENV=  CPPFLAGS="-I${LOCALBASE}/include" \
>                 LDFLAGS="-L${LOCALBASE}/lib"
> 
> Also mention that this is only to be used when the configure script
> can't find it's whereabouts without it. We don't need this in every
> single Makefile -- ie. clutter.

This really makes sense.  At least `configure' by GNU autoconf should
figure out the include and lib paths by itself, as my testing shows.

> Nits:
> 
> - I would drop the whole discussion about shlibver arguments to
>   USE_GETTEXT. Just draws misuse.

I'd like to, but the fair way would be to remove the doubtful,
and currently unused, feature from bsd.port.mk, too.  For now
I'll tell that its use is <emphasis>strongly discouraged</emphasis>.

> - why GNU configure, GNU gettext? configure, gettext is just fine.

`GNU configure' because we set GNU_CONFIGURE.  `GNU gettext' is the
well-known name of the thing.  (I wonder how successfully it could
be replaced by the NetBSD fork of Citrus, which is BSD-licensed...)
However, I think I should soften the rough corner by providing a
GNU designation once for each and then use just `configure' and
`gettext'.

>   Check the rest of the document and follow the style.

I failed to find much style in this aspect.  Could you?  FWIW, the
section before my one is titled `Using GNU autotools'.

> Otherwise it's acceptable, maybe the language is a bit too informal to
> match the rest of the document, but whatever. Thanks!

Perhaps the language was due to my having fun from writing the text.
:-)

Thank you!

The new revision is available at the same URL:

http://people.freebsd.org/~yar/porters-handbook/using-gettext.html

-- 
Yar