Re: pointless 'aclocal' warning

[Bruno Haible]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote on 2009-05-11:
> > In the automake HEAD from today, but *not* in automake-1.10.2, this code
> > in a .m4 file
> > 
> >   m4_ifdef([AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION],
> >     [AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION([--flag=error:3:c-format])
> >      AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION([--flag=error_at_line:5:c-format])])
> > 
> > triggers an 'aclocal' warning:
> > 
> > gnulib-m4/gnulib-comp.m4:176: warning: macro `AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION' not found 
> > in library
> 
> I get this warning with aclocal-1.10 but not with aclocal-1.10c.
> the difference between our setups is that my aclocal-1.10 also sees a
> definition of AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION in its $prefix/share/aclocal, whereas
> the other does not.

You're right, and thanks for this insight! Indeed, with three different
versions of aclocal (1.10, 1.10.2, 1.11), each installed in a fresh $PREFIX,
i.e. with an otherwise empty $PREFIX/share/aclocal/ directory, I see the
warning. And when $PREFIX/share/aclocal/ contains po.m4 from gettext-0.17,
the warning goes away.

> You are supposed to not use the AM_.* namespace, as that is
> Automake's domain, and this warning is special for macros that belong to
> Automake, and AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION is a gettext macro and has nothing to
> do with Automake.

Ah! Now it becomes clear. All fault is on gettext's side, and I'll work
around it.

> if you would prefer that we exclude a hard-coded list of exceptions for
> old gettext macros, I would be fine with that, but in that case I'd say
> that you shouldn't use the namespace for new macros.  Or, at the very
> least, you should put new gettext macros in some easily regonizable
> namespace only, maybe AM_.?GETTEXT.* or so.

I'm not asking for that much. Thank you.

Bruno