If you do not have an aclocal.m4 file in your distribution,
the simplest is to concatenate the files build-to-host.m4,
gettext.m4, host-cpu-c-abi.m4, intlmacosx.m4,
iconv.m4, lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4, lib-prefix.m4,
nls.m4, po.m4, progtest.m4 from GNU gettext’s
prefix/share/gettext/m4/ directory into a single file.
If you already have an aclocal.m4 file, then you will have
to merge the said macro files into your aclocal.m4. Note that if
you are upgrading from a previous release of GNU gettext, you
should most probably replace the macros (AM_GNU_GETTEXT,
etc.), as they usually
change a little from one release of GNU gettext to the next.
Their contents may vary as we get more experience with strange systems
out there.
You should be using GNU automake 1.9 or newer. With it, you need
to copy the files build-to-host.m4, gettext.m4,
host-cpu-c-abi.m4, intlmacosx.m4, iconv.m4,
lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4, lib-prefix.m4, nls.m4,
po.m4, progtest.m4 from GNU gettext’s
prefix/share/gettext/m4/
directory to a subdirectory named m4/ and add the line
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4
to your top level Makefile.am.
If you are using GNU automake 1.12 or newer, it is even easier:
Add the line
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4
to your top level Makefile.am, and run ‘aclocal --install --system-acdir=prefix/share/gettext/m4 -I m4’. This will copy the needed files to the m4/ subdirectory automatically, before updating aclocal.m4.
Note: This --system-acdir option should only be used here, once.
If you were to use it after autopoint has been run,
it would destroy the consistency that autopoint guarantees
and lead to all sorts of malfunction at build time.
These macros check for the internationalization support functions and related information.