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13 The Maintainer’s View

The maintainer of a package has many responsibilities. One of them is ensuring that the package will install easily on many platforms, and that the magic we described earlier (see The User’s View) will work for installers and end users.

Of course, there are many possible ways by which GNU gettext might be integrated in a distribution, and this chapter does not cover them in all generality. Instead, it details one possible approach which is especially adequate for many free software distributions following GNU standards, or even better, Gnits standards, because GNU gettext is purposely for helping the internationalization of the whole GNU project, and as many other good free packages as possible. So, the maintainer’s view presented here presumes that the package already has a configure.ac file and uses GNU Autoconf.

Nevertheless, GNU gettext may surely be useful for free packages not following GNU standards and conventions, but the maintainers of such packages might have to show imagination and initiative in organizing their distributions so gettext work for them in all situations. There are surely many, out there.

Even if gettext methods are now stabilizing, slight adjustments might be needed between successive gettext versions, so you should ideally revise this chapter in subsequent releases, looking for changes.

• Flat or Non-Flat Directory Structures
• Prerequisite Works
• Invoking the gettextize Program
• Files You Must Create or Alter
• Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac
• Integrating with Version Control Systems
• Creating a Distribution Tarball