Subject: Re: [PATCH] i18n: disable i18n for shell scripts if NO_GETTEXT defined

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:15:48 -0600

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> That's not what NO_GETTEXT means, and not what it *should* mean. It
> means that your output won't be translated, but we might still make
> use of a locally installed library to provide the gettext() and
> eval_gettext() functions.
>
> This approach has worked everywhere so far (Linux, OSX, *BSD etc.),
> and you want to change *everywhere* because you have some completely
> broken Cygwin install.

I thought NO_GETTEXT meant either "I'm aware that there is this new
translation feature, and it may or may not be useful to me some day,
but no thanks for now, since I cannot tolerate the possibility of
regressions" (i.e., opting out of a new feature) or "my platform does
not have suitable gettext infrastructure so please do not use it"
(i.e., reducing build-time dependencies by making some optional).

"I don't want localized messages" is spelled as "LC_MESSAGES=C; export
LC_MESSAGES", not as "make NO_GETTEXT=YesPlease".

I guess I am wondering, does the approach in Alex's patch have the
potential to cause actual problems?  If it doesn't, I don't see what
there is to complain about.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan