What is the deal with "intl" and "macros" ?

[Matt Martin <mmartin Calvin SFC Lehigh Edu>]

Greetings,

Is there some standard way that one is supposed to avoid the soup of
problems that seem to be associated with the "macros" and "intl"
directories during cvs updates/checkouts.

Historically, I used to get the "x file is in the way" message.
If I deleted them all, they would be replaced on the next cvs action.

Lately, the the intl dirs don't seem to get replaced (have they been
removed?) , and configure (despite --disable-nls) craps out because
it seems to need some of the header files in "intl".

Is there a trick such as linking to the "intl" directory in
"gnome-common" ?  

I've seen lots of unsatisfactorally answered questions to this effect.  
Can ANYONE actually give useful advice on this matter ?

On another note:
I find it more than a little unnerving that the config script for libgtop
is telling me that I have a RedHat system and therefore I must install
bc .  Really, it started out as Slackware, and unless somebody snuck in
while I wasn't watching, I never installed RedHat.

Granted, I DO need to re-install my broken bc....

thanks,
 Matt Martin
matt.martin@ieee.org

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