Re: non-developer packages depending on gettext?

[Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com>]

>>>>> Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> writes:
>>>>> Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> writes:

[…]

 >> To note is that Source: gnunet has contrib/report.sh, which calls
 >> gettext(1), but it doesn't seem to be propagated to any of the
 >> binaries currently depending on gettext.

 > You've misunderstood the gettext packaging.

 > $ dpkg -S `which gettext`
 > gettext-base: /usr/bin/gettext

 > So packages/scripts which call gettext should not depend on gettext
 > but on gettext-base instead — that's the point.

	The point is that I haven't checked for gettext(1) the first
	time I've examined the gnunet source package.  So, even though I
	was sure that the dependency on gettext was unwarranted, I
	didn't actually rule out gettext-base.

[…]

 >>> Could be worth filing a wishlist bug against lintian because it
 >>> should be quite easy to spot.

 >> ?  I see no easy way to discern between these three cases (the
 >> dependency is valid, depend on gettext-base instead, drop the
 >> dependency altogether.)

 > 0: Manipulating PO files directly should only happen during package
 > builds, so either the package is itself a build tool (like po4a) or
 > the dependency goes into Build-Depends.

	I understand the logic.  What I can't understand is how to
	implement it as a lintian check.  (There isn't really a “this
	package is a build tool” flag.  There're Tags:, but they may
	be misleading; consider, e. g., gnuplot bearing suite::gnu.)

 > 1: Depend on gettext-base but not gettext when the package calls
 > /usr/bin/gettext, dgettext and/or ngettext directly (all from
 > gettext-base) rather than the other executables in the gettext binary
 > package which do stuff like manipulating or reporting on PO files.

	I don't see an easy way to check for calls to gettext(1), etc.,
	either.  Certainly, we can grep the source, but how reliably
	(and specific) would that be for a lintian check?

 > 2: Drop any dependency when no calls to gettext can be found in the
 > source and it isn't a build tool.  Languages other than shell have
 > in-built ways of using the .mo file prepared through PO and gettext
 > to output translated text at runtime.  This has nothing to do with
 > running gettext itself.  Languages may also have their own packaging
 > support for this, e. g. liblocale-gettext-perl (which itself uses the
 > libc support, not gettext-base).

	So, at least we could safely warn about a dependency on
	gettext-base for a package containing no Shell scripts.

	Still, it doesn't seem to rule out a dependency on gettext.

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