gettext incompatible with automake's distcheck target?

[Jens Seidel <jensseidel@users.sf.net>]

Hi,

I tried to use in an automake based project gettext but I always get
errors starting "make distcheck". The problem seems to be that a readonly
source directory is used during this step and make update-po is started in
po/ which tries to update the POT file in the source directory. This fails:

make[4]: Entering directory `/home/jens/.../myProject/_build/po'
/usr/bin/xgettext --default-domain=myProject --directory=../.. \
          --add-comments=TRANSLATORS: --keyword=_ --keyword=N_ \
          --files-from=../../po/POTFILES.in \
        && test ! -f myProject.po \
           || ( rm -f ../../po/myProject.pot \
                && mv myProject.po ../../po/myProject.pot )
rm: cannot remove `../../po/myProject.pot': Permission denied
make[4]: *** [rhost.pot-update] Error 1

I really cannot believe that I'm the first user of automake/gettext who
noticed this. How to solve it?

Jens