Re: gnulib and gettextize

[Bruno Haible]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > Question to the autoconf experts: Is it possible to write a macro
> > > AM_GETTEXT_NEED_NGETTEXT such that whenever a user writes
> > >    AM_GETTEXT_NEED_NGETTEXT
> > >    AM_GNU_GETTEXT
> > > or
> > >    AM_GNU_GETTEXT
> > >    AM_GETTEXT_NEED_NGETTEXT
> > > the AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro "knows" that a AM_GETTEXT_NEED_NGETTEXT 
> > > invocation
> > > exists elsewhere? So, a kind of "backward propagation"?
> > 
> > Nothing comes to me off the top of my head.  I suppose the actual work
> > could be "deferred to the end" but I'm sort of waving my hands here.
> 
> CVS Libtool has an example usage of the documented Autoconf macro
> AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS_PRE in libltdl/m4/ltdl.m4:LTDL_INIT.  The part in
> there will be expanded shortly before the config.status generation code.

Thanks for the hint. But what I'm actually looking for is to modify
the expansion of the AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro depending whether
AM_GETTEXT_NEED_NGETTEXT is seen or not.

> Another possible, but undocumented way is to divert text to early in the
> configure script in the manner that (the Autoconf implementation of)
> AC_CHECK_FUNCS_ONCE does.

Yes, this would work, but it's a completely undocumented area...

The only other solution I've been thinking of is to rely on aclocal's
feature to include only files that are needed, and then use m4_ifdef.
But that requires to have a separate file for each possible value of
AM_GNU_GETTEXT's second argument. And, worse, it will likely break when
aclocal is replaced with something completely different (see doc node
"Future of aclocal").

Bruno