Re: Bug#400453: Makefile misses to clean .gmo-files in the clean target, so they get never be updated after updating an .po file (fwd)

[Santiago Vila]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Bruno Haible wrote:

> Daniel Leidert <address@hidden> wrote:
> > It seems, the .gmo files are cleaned in the maintainer-clean target. But
> > they are created during make and so have to be cleaned in the
> > clean-target [1].
> 
> The text you cite is a heuristic list of rules of thumb. A more important
> text are the GNU Coding Standards, which say:
> 
>   `clean'
>      Delete all files in the current directory that are normally
>      created by building the program.  Also delete files in other
>      directories if they are created by this makefile.  However, don't
>      delete the files that record the configuration.  Also preserve
>      files that could be made by building, but normally aren't because
>      the distribution comes with them. ...
> 
> The *.gmo files are part of the distribution, hence must not be removed by
> "make clean". (If they did, then a user who does not have the GNU gettext
> tools installed could not do
> "./configure; make; make clean; make; make install".)
> 
> > Otherwise they will never be updated
> 
> The *.gmo files don't need to be updated often. Earlier the Makefile rules
> updated the *.gmo files each time the *.po files changed, and the *.po files
> each time the .pot file changed, and the .pot file each time the sources
> changed. The maintainers were annoyed by this - in their eyes - useless
> waste of CPU cycles.
> 
> Santiago Vila writes:
> > If this is not a bug, then it seems a documentation bug somewhere.
> 
> The *.gmo files are required when a maintainer does a distribution.
> Therefore see documentation section "Release Management". It documents
> a Makefile target 'update-po'. If you look into the Makefile, you will
> also see a Makefile target 'update-gmo'.

Thanks a lot for the explanations. Closing then.