Why autoreconf complains about missing AM_GNU_GETTEXT

[Jan Palus]

Hi,

there are projects in the wild that provide only static content and translation
domain. No executable code is attached and provided translation domain is
utilized by other projects. One such example is mate-backgrounds. If I
understand it correctly the only required macros in this case are
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION, so autoreconf detects gettext usage, and AM_PO_SUBDIRS
to prepare po/ directory. However consistency check within autoreconf complains
about such setup with error:

  error "$configure_ac: AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION is used, but not AM_GNU_GETTEXT"
    if $uses_gettext && ! $uses_gettext_via_traces;

Mentioned AM_GNU_GETTEXT implies additional checks for C compiler, linker and
gettext symbols availability which are completely redundant for such projects,
hence my question: is this error really valid?