Re: [commit] Avoid CATOBJEXT=NONE; Was: [patch/rfc] Only use ../intl/when present

[Mark Kettenis <kettenis at gnu dot org>]

   Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 09:57:48 -0500
   From: Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org>

   Andrew Cagney wrote:
   > Andrew Cagney wrote:
   > 
   >> Hello,
   >>
   >> This patch should stop getgext.m4 trying to use ../intl when it isn't 
   >> present.
   >>
   >> I can't actually test it - all the systems I looked to test it on had 
   >> a bundled gettext :-/

   The attached should fix a further problem - it was appending NONE as the 
   catalog suffix.  Again tested on a system with installed gettext, and 
   with --disable-nls (which isn't very useful).

   If people still encounter problems can they please include a few details 
   such as the broken Makefile.  Otherwize I'm put in a situtation where 
   I'm flying blind :-(

Sorry Andrew, but this just helps a tiny little bit.  I'm sorry that I
didn't provide more details, but I wasn't asking you to fix
gettext.m4.  The problem here is that gettext.m4 was only designed to
be used with an included intl/ subdirectory.  Therefore it does only a
halfhearted check for an external intl/ and never ever disables
internationalization unless you explicitly ask for it by specifying
--disable-nls on the command line.  Removing intl/ was a mistake that
did go unnoticed because of limitations of cvs.  When I first noticed
the problem in december, I looked at whether we could fix gettext.m4.
My assessment was that it wasn't easy and that it would be much easier
to simply bring back intl/.  Our motivation for removing intl/ was
that it somethings caused build problems, but we never analyzed those
problems quite in detail (my suspicion is that this case is similar to
the ncurses breakage; compiler searching /usr/local/include but the
linker not searching /usr/local/lib or the other way around).

The proper way to fix this seems to be to bring over intl/ from GCC.
The wish has been expressed several times on the gdb and binutils
mailing lists, and I haven't seen any objections.  I'll commit myself
to doing the work in march if you'll bring back intl/ in the meantime.

Mark

P.S. I'm probably too much of a theoretical physicist by thinking one
can prove something is broken by simply staring at a piece of paper
(or in this case a computer screen).  So attached you find some
experimental evidence that things are still broken.  If you need more
details, just ask for them.  I'll hapily tar up my whole build tree
for you if necessary.

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