Re: burned by Makefile.in.in's $(DOMAIN).pot-update rule

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Jim,

> In addition, it searches all (well, nearly all) files in that directory,
> not just those that are part of the package.  If you could limit the
> search to say, automake's list of $(DISTFILES), that would be great.

This would be more correct, yes: it would not risk to get different results
in a fresh directory and in the developer's directory. But there are also
projects without automake; these are also supported by gettext.

> >> Another is to allow people like me to replace the grep command
> >> with something else.
> >
> > I think this would be too much tailored to the particular failure that you
> > experienced. It is not general enough.
> 
> Letting me override some default
> (with no change in before for everyone else)
> is not general enough?
> I don't understand that.

For a customization to be worth documenting, and worth that every developer
that uses gettext reads its description and considers to use it, it should
be more general, that is, applicable to more situations that just yours.
If the goal is to only handle your particular situation, it can also be done
without a customization/hook. Would this workaround solve your problem?

--- gettext-tools/po/Makefile.in.in.orig        Sat Jun 12 02:00:07 2010
+++ gettext-tools/po/Makefile.in.in     Sat Jun 12 01:59:45 2010
@@ -137,8 +137,16 @@
 
 # This target rebuilds $(DOMAIN).pot; it is an expensive operation.
 # Note that $(DOMAIN).pot is not touched if it doesn't need to be changed.
+# The determination of whether the package xyz is a GNU one is based on the
+# heuristic whether some file in the top level directory mentions "GNU xyz".
+# If GNU 'find' is available, we avoid grepping through monster files.
 $(DOMAIN).pot-update: $(POTFILES) $(srcdir)/POTFILES.in remove-potcdate.sed
-       if LC_ALL=C grep 'GNU @PACKAGE@' $(top_srcdir)/* 2>/dev/null | grep -v 
'libtool:' >/dev/null; then \
+       if { if (LC_ALL=C find --version) 2>/dev/null | grep GNU >/dev/null; 
then \
+              LC_ALL=C find -L $(top_srcdir) -maxdepth 1 -type f -size 
-10000000c -exec grep 'GNU @PACKAGE@' '{}' /dev/null ';' 2>/dev/null; \
+            else \
+              LC_ALL=C grep 'GNU @PACKAGE@' $(top_srcdir)/* 2>/dev/null; \
+            fi; \
+          } | grep -v 'libtool:' >/dev/null; then \
          package_gnu='GNU '; \
        else \
          package_gnu=''; \