[sr #110435] autoreconf: recognize when AM_ICONV is used without the rest of gettext

[Bruno Haible]

Follow-up Comment #8, sr#110435 (group autoconf):

I think this bug should NOT be fixed.

The reason is that ideally, there should be one and only one tool responsible
for installing config.rpath in the developer's package when needed. It's
already bad enough that three(!) tools do this: gettextize, autopoint, and
gnulib-tool. This creates interdependencies between GNU gettext and GNU
gnulib, that fortunately are bearable because GNU gnulib changes are effective
immediately - no releases.

If we were to add a fourth tool (autoreconf), we would also have
interdependencies between GNU autoconf and GNU gettext. Since GNU autoconf
tends to have releases quite infrequently, roughly once every 3 years on
average, this would mean that some aspects of GNU gettext could be blocked for
several years. (There are also already interdependencies between GNU automake
and GNU gettext. We have been lucky that this affects only a warning and
nothing is blocked.)

It is better if this bug does not get fixed - this affects few users - than
that the development of GNU gettext be partially blocked for years.

The proper way to fix this would be for 'autoreconf' to invoke some program
(or shell script) that GNU gettext has installed. So that GNU gettext may
evolve even if there are no new GNU autoconf releases for N years. Much like
bash does with the bash completions: bash does not include completion logic
for a multitude of package, but rather it has a mechanism through which
packages can install their completion logic.


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