Re: [bug-gnulib] using gnulib on non posix/gnu systems

[Bruno Haible]

Juan Manuel Guerrero wrote:
> I have used the getopt.[ch] files to port certain posix/gnu stuff
> to DJGPP/MSDOS. The compilation of getopt.c fails because in the
> design of this file it is assumed that NLS support is available either
> through the system libc library or through ported versions of gettext
> and iconv libraries.

This is not correct. getopt.c assumes that you add gettext.h (in gnulib)
to your package. But gettext.h doesn't assume that a gettext() function or
a <libintl.h> is available; it doesn't even assume that you use the
AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro to test for the gettext() function. (Of course you are
welcome to do so :-)).

This is like with many other headers provided by gnulib: they provide
some functionality not present in your system, or sometimes only dummy
replacements, but in all cases the goal is to have a single #include line
for each feature that you use.
   #include "gettext.h"
follows this principle.

Bruno