Git and gettext

Hi folks,

Was wondering why I need gettext to compile git, even if I tell it I don't need NLS. I've not needed it to compile anything else. Is this really necessary to run git?

If it *is* absolutely needed for some reason, can at least the configure script give a warning and error out when msgfmt isn't found, rather than letting you go through two-thirds of the make before crashing?

On 2024-08-03 at 07:58:55, Kim Scarborough wrote:

I believe you can use NO_GETTEXT=1 and NO_MSGFMT=1 (both must be set) to remove the need for gettext and msgfmt. The latter can be omitted if you're not building git-gui. You can see other configuration options at the top of the Makefile.

I will note that both of these commands are required as of POSIX 1003.1-2024, though.

I tried setting both but it still errors out. A little later in the build, though.

On 2024-08-03 at 17:24:43, Kim Scarborough wrote:

Hmm, I can't remove msgfmt from my system, but if I put a `msgfmt` script in `$TMP/path` that contains just a shebang and `exit 1` and do this, the build succeeds:

--- PATH="$TMP/path:$PATH" make -j12 NO_GETTEXT=1 NO_MSGFMT=1 ---

Note that `config.mak` is not read by git-gui, so you do really have to set `NO_MSGFMT=1` on the command line.

Can you show exactly the commands you're running and exactly the output you're getting? Also, what OS and version are you running this on?

On 8/3/24 12:34 PM, brian m. carlson wrote:

Not working for me. I ran "make NO_GETTEXT=1 NO_MSGFMT=1" and it dies thusly:

     BUILTIN git-version
     BUILTIN git-whatchanged
     SUBDIR git-gui
GITGUI_VERSION = 0.21.0.128.g2864e
     * new locations or Tcl/Tk interpreter
     MSGFMT    po/bg.msg     MSGFMT    po/de.msg     MSGFMT    po/el.msg 
     MSGFMT    po/fr.msg make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/bg.msg] Error 127
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/de.msg] Error 127
make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/el.msg] Error 127
     MSGFMT    po/hu.msg make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/fr.msg] Error 127
     MSGFMT    po/it.msg make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/hu.msg] Error 127
     MSGFMT    po/ja.msg make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/it.msg] Error 127
     MSGFMT    po/nb.msg make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/ja.msg] Error 127
make[1]: *** [Makefile:239: po/nb.msg] Error 127
make: *** [Makefile:2365: all] Error 2

This is a recently-built Linux from Scratch box.

On Sun, Aug 04, 2024 at 04:26:19PM -0500, Kim Scarborough wrote:

If we don't have msgfmt, I think git-gui invokes a custom script via tclsh. If you also don't have that, it will fail. Running with "make V=1" makes this more obvious, since it shows the fallback command name instead of "MSGFMT".

If you don't need git-gui at all, the simplest thing is to just run "make NO_GETTEXT=1 NO_TCLTK=1". That's what I do, and I have neither msgfmt nor gettext on my system.

If you do need git-gui, you'll probably need to make sure your tcl install works (and has tclsh in the path).

-Peff

On 8/4/24 7:53 PM, Jeff King wrote:

That did it. Thanks!

Would it be possible to modify the configure script so that it checks for this stuff?

On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 04:52:39AM -0500, Kim Scarborough wrote:

Probably. It looks like the configure script knows about both gettext and tcl paths, but running "autoconf && ./configure" on my machine doesn't disable either.

Looks like the NO_GETTEXT test is checking to compile against libintl. Which I do have (it comes with glibc), but I don't have the other tools.

For tcl, you can say "--without-tcltk" manually. But if you don't, it just assumes "wish" is present without checking.

So I'd imagine that both tests could be made more robust. I don't use autoconf myself (in the Git project, it is an optional layer that sits on top of the Makefile knobs), so I'll leave that to somebody more motivated (and hopefully more familiar with the usual autoconf solutions to these kinds of things).

-Peff