The following was enough for me ("intltool-update -p" and "make
distcheck" both work) in alacarte/trunk:
$ svn diff
Index: po/POTFILES.in
===================================================================
--- po/POTFILES.in (revision 219)
+++ po/POTFILES.in (working copy)
@@ -2,5 +2,4 @@
Alacarte/MainWindow.py
Alacarte/MenuEditor.py
alacarte.desktop.in.in
-alacarte.desktop.in
alacarte.glade
Index: po/POTFILES.skip
===================================================================
--- po/POTFILES.skip (revision 219)
+++ po/POTFILES.skip (working copy)
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
alacarte.desktop.in
-
+alacarte.desktop.in.h