Integrate ITS Tool with gettext and Autotools (Was: Re: Death of gnome-common)

[Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org>]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 02:17:52PM +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> On 24 June 2015 at 14:13, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2015-06-24 at 08:56 +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > > I do hope that, if you're using glib-gettext or intltool, you spend a
> > > little bit of time to port to upstream gettext instead.
> >
> > Has anyone written a guide on how to do this?
>
> It's the same guide as using gettext. Upstream gettext recognises
> desktop files, GSettings schemas, as well as GtkBuilder XML
> definitions.
>
> Sadly, it's still in use for AppData XML, but for that (and any other
> XML-based format) there's itstool, which is also used by the
> documentation team for the application help:
>
>    http://itstool.org/

I have a question about how to integrate ITS Tool with upstream gettext
and Autotools (and Git).

I have a branch in GtkSourceView to use upstream gettext and itstool:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/log/?h=wip/dont-use-intltool

ITS Tool generates *.pot files that can be added to the POTFILES.in.
I've tried to not add the generated *.pot files to Git, because
generated files should not be added to the version control system. But
then there are problems with builddir != srcdir. For tarballs the
solution is easy: distribute the generated sub *.pot files in the
tarball. But when compiling from the git repository, some make targets
don't work with builddir != srcdir.

So a solution is to add the generated *.pot files to Git.

Is there another solution?

The gettext documentation doesn't recommend to add generated files in
the POTFILES.in:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/po_002fPOTFILES_002ein.html

When a file is present in POTFILES.in, the make target supposes that the
file is in srcdir. So adding a make target (in a gettext Rules file that
is added to the po/Makefile) to build that file in builddir won't help
when builddir != srcdir.

Maybe a solution is to modify po/Makefile.in.in, like it is done in GTK+
(but not for using ITS Tool). But I'd rather keep things simple.

Is there a recommended way of doing things?

Thanks in advance,
Sébastien