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)

[Bruno Haible]

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'.

Bruno