> On Mon, 31 May 1999, Julian Gilbey wrote:
>
> > I really would like to see gettext as being considered an important
> > package. As Debian increasingly provides internationalised programs,
> > a Good Thing, it is going to be increasingly annoying always to have
> > to either check for gettext's presence or to Depend upon it.
>
> Sorry but I disagree: adding two lines at the beginning of a
> shell script does not make it "annoying". It makes it more portable
> very easily without having to pay a high price.
OK, I hear the argument. You are right on this point.
> Please read the /root/.bash_profile file in the base system or read the
> archives to see a good example of this.
My /root/.base_profile was too old ;)
> > An interesting possibility I have just thought of is that of i18n of
> > maintainer scripts. If it is known that gettext is installed as part
> > of the base system, possibly even marked Essential, then any non-base
> > maintainer scripts can make use of gettext. (Although perl one's will
> > have other problems.)
>
> Even if we decide to internationalize maintainer scripts, there is not
> still a reason to give gettext the essential flag. For some users, it
> may be essential, for some users, it may not. Let us do one thing at a
> time. gettext is currently optional. If people agree, I will ask the ftp
> maintainers to make it of "standard" priority.
I think that would make sense. Having an internationalised system
with scripts saying "if command -v gettext; then ..." (which is
probably better than "if [ -x /usr/bin/gettext ]; then ..."; it allows
users to use their own versions should they desire) where gettext is
not standard does seem a bit bizarre.
But this is all independent of the question of splitting the package.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg