Re: Invoking AM_GNU_GETTEXT conditionally in configure.ac

[David Bruce]

Hi Ralf,

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:25 AM, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello David,
>
> * David Bruce wrote on Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 09:55:03PM CET:
>> dnl NOTE - the following conditional does not work.
>> if test $native_win32 = yes; then
>>   AM_GNU_GETTEXT
>> else
>>   AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
>> fi
>
> AFAICS, the AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro cannot be invoked more than once,
> conditionally, in a configure.ac file, with the decision only made at
> configure time.[1]  Whether you have an intl/ subdirectory in your
> distribution tarball should not depend upon the system you're building
> on, I guess.

Basically, the Debian packager for our programs says that there should
not be an intl/ subdir because of Debian policies regarding
duplication of code.  However, I had not previously been able to set
up a linux-based win32 crossbuild with a separate intl library.

> If you want to allow different types of distributions of your tarball,
> you should expand the macro differently at m4 (autoconf) run time, by
> an m4 conditional like m4_ifdef, m4_if or so.

I'll read up on that.

> [1] The internal reason why it can't work is that the macro uses
> AC_REQUIRE (thus you should use AS_IF not shell if, to let required
> macros be expanded outside the shell conditional), and that it does
> more different, complex things at m4 time depending upon the macro
> argument, which means your shell conditional isn't taken into account
> for these things.

So just to be clear, even if I stick the AM_GNU_GETTEXT macros inside
an AS_IF conditional, it still won't have the desired behavior?

Thanks,

David