Maintainer mode: wrong gettext version?

Maintainer mode: wrong gettext version?

[Tsukasa OI]

Hello all (especially maintainers),

I was testing the maintainer mode to dig down build pipeline on
Binutils/GDB and found something strange.

According to README-maintainer-mode, enabling maintainer mode requires
following versions:

-   autoconf 2.69
-   automake 1.15.1
-   libtool 2.2.6
-   gettext 0.14.5

I tried to use the maintainer mode with Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (default
toolchain) with "/opt/maint-mode" to install older versions of the
software above.

Autoconf, Automake and Libtool were fine.  But I don't think Gettext
0.14.5 is the correct version.  Here's some proofs:

-   On "intl" and "libiberty", "aclocal.m4" does not have a macro
   "AC_ISC_POSIX" which is required by gettext < 0.15.
    If the build files are really built with gettext 0.14.5,
    files "{libiberty,intl}/{configure,aclocal.m4}" must have some
    traces of "AC_ISC_POSIX" but there's none in the master branch.
    That indicates that the true version of gettext is >= 0.15.
-   On gettext < 0.16, rebuilding the message files fail because
    msgfmt cannot parse lines starting with "#~|" (this syntax got
    acceptable since gettext >= 0.16).
    That suggests that the true version of gettext is >= 0.16.

And the following fact narrows the possibility even further:

-   On gettext >= 0.17, regenerated "gnulib/{aclocal.m4,configure}"
    result in different files (macros including "AM_PO_SUBDIRS" are
    copied to "gnulib/aclocal.m4").

Unless I miss something, I must conclude that the correct version of
gettext is either:

-   0.16
-   0.16.1

note: this assumes that we have consistent gettext version when...
-   regenerating ALL the build files and
-   building with the maintainer mode

Did I miss something?  Or do we need to change README-maintainer-mode to
update the version of gettext?

Thanks,
Tsukasa

Re: Maintainer mode: wrong gettext version?

[Andreas Schwab]

On Sep 08 2022, Tsukasa OI via Binutils wrote:

> Autoconf, Automake and Libtool were fine.  But I don't think Gettext
> 0.14.5 is the correct version.  Here's some proofs:
>
> -   On "intl" and "libiberty", "aclocal.m4" does not have a macro
>    "AC_ISC_POSIX" which is required by gettext < 0.15.

Note that commit 88fa57d7821 replaced the gettextize generated file with
an aclocal generated file, with the former contents moved to various
files in config.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Maintainer mode: wrong gettext version?

[Andreas Schwab]

On Sep 08 2022, Andreas Schwab wrote:

> On Sep 08 2022, Tsukasa OI via Binutils wrote:
>
>> Autoconf, Automake and Libtool were fine.  But I don't think Gettext
>> 0.14.5 is the correct version.  Here's some proofs:
>>
>> -   On "intl" and "libiberty", "aclocal.m4" does not have a macro
>>    "AC_ISC_POSIX" which is required by gettext < 0.15.
>
> Note that commit 88fa57d7821 replaced the gettextize generated file with

Make that commit bf070c84b1c (88fa57d7821 is the originating commit in
the GCC tree).

> an aclocal generated file, with the former contents moved to various
> files in config.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Maintainer mode: wrong gettext version?

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Tsukasa,

> -   gettext 0.14.5

> Unless I miss something, I must conclude that the correct version of
> gettext is either:
> 
> -   0.16
> -   0.16.1

This would not surprise me.  Maintainner mode builds do tend to be quite
sensitive to the versions of autoconf, automake and libtool installed, but
less so to the version of gettext.

I have taken your suggestion and updated the README-maintainer-mode to
indicate that gettext 0.16.1 is needed.

Cheers
   Nick