File: gettext.info,  Node: Installers,  Next: Programming Languages,  Prev: Maintainers,  Up: Top

15 The Installer's and Distributor's View
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   By default, packages fully using GNU ‘gettext’, internally, are
installed in such a way as to allow translation of messages.  At
_configuration_ time, those packages should automatically detect whether
the underlying host system already provides the GNU ‘gettext’ functions.
If not, the GNU ‘gettext’ library should be automatically prepared and
used.  Installers may use special options at configuration time for
changing this behavior.  The command ‘./configure
--with-included-gettext’ bypasses system ‘gettext’ to use the included
GNU ‘gettext’ instead, while ‘./configure --disable-nls’ produces
programs totally unable to translate messages.

   Internationalized packages have usually many ‘LL.po’ or ‘LL_CC.po’
files, where

   • LL gives an ISO 639 two-letter code identifying the language.  For
     some languages, a two-letter code does not exist, and a
     three-letter code is used instead.
   • The optional CC is an ISO 3166 two-letter code of a country or
     territory.

Unless translations are disabled, all those available are installed
together with the package.  However, the environment variable ‘LINGUAS’
may be set, prior to configuration, to limit the installed set.
‘LINGUAS’ should then contain a space separated list of locale names (of
the form ‘LL’ or ‘LL_CC’), stating which languages or language variants
are allowed.

   GNU ‘gettext’ uses *.its and *.loc files (*note Preparing ITS
Rules::) from other packages, provided they are installed in
‘PREFIX/share/gettext/its/’, where ‘PREFIX’ is the value of the
‘--prefix’ option passed to ‘gettext’'s ‘configure’ script.  So, this is
the canonical location for installing *.its and *.loc files from other
packages.