Bug#748979: songwrite fails to run

[Morten Bo Johansen <mbj@spamcop.net>]

Martin Steghöfer <martin@steghoefer.eu> wrote:

> Hi Morten,
> 
> thanks for your bug report. Unfortunately, I couldn't reproduce your
> problem. So we may need further information. Let's start with this:
> 
> Does the file "/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/songwrite.mo" exist in your
> system?
> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 

Hi Martin,

Okay, that was pretty straightforward: The gettext message file
was not there because I use the localepurge program. I
installed it manually and now the program starts fine.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that usually the
English messages are part of the program's source code (and
thus compiled directly into it) whereas only the message files
with translations into other languages are held in separate
gettext message catalogs. It never crossed my mind that this
could be the problem.

If you want to have it the way it is now, maybe you could a
check for the presence of the localepurge program in the debian
"preinst" script and issue a warning to the user that the
program will not run if the English message catalog is deleted?


Thanks,

Morten