Question

I’m trying to compile enc2ly ( http://enc2ly.sourceforge.net/en/ ) on Windows using cygwin but it gives errors. When I type ./configure, the result is the following:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c  
checking whether build environment is sane... yes  
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/bin/mkdir -p  
checking for gawk... gawk  
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes  
checking build system type... i686-pc-cygwin  
checking host system type... i686-pc-cygwin  
checking for gcc... gcc  
checking whether the C compiler works... yes  
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.exe  
checking for suffix of executables... .exe  
checking whether we are cross compiling... no  
checking for suffix of object files... o  
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes  
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes  
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed  
checking for style of include used by make... GNU  
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3  
checking whether NLS is requested... yes  
checking for msgfmt... /usr/bin/msgfmt  
checking for gmsgfmt... /usr/bin/msgfmt  
checking for xgettext... /usr/bin/xgettext  
checking for msgmerge... /usr/bin/msgmerge  
checking for ld used by GCC... /usr/i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld.exe  
checking if the linker (/usr/i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld.exe) is GNU ld... yes  
checking for shared library run path origin... done  
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E  
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep  
checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E  
checking for CFPreferencesCopyAppValue... no  
checking for CFLocaleCopyCurrent... no  
checking for GNU gettext in libc... no  
checking for iconv... yes  
checking for working iconv... yes  
checking how to link with libiconv... -liconv  
checking for GNU gettext in libintl... yes  
checking whether to use NLS... yes  
checking where the gettext function comes from... external libintl  
checking how to link with libintl... -lintl  
checking for ANSI C header files... yes  
checking for sys/types.h... yes  
checking for sys/stat.h... yes  
checking for stdlib.h... yes  
checking for string.h... yes  
checking for memory.h... yes  
checking for strings.h... yes  
checking for inttypes.h... yes  
checking for stdint.h... yes  
checking for unistd.h... yes  
checking for stdlib.h... (cached) yes  
checking for string.h... (cached) yes  
checking for error_at_line... yes  
checking for memset... yes  
checking for strstr... yes  
configure: creating ./config.status  
config.status: creating Makefile  
config.status: creating dok/Makefile  
config.status: creating iloj/Makefile  
config.status: creating kod/Makefile  
config.status: creating enc2ly.spec  
config.status: creating enc2ly.lsm  
config.status: creating po/Makefile.in  
config.status: creating config.h  
config.status: executing depfiles commands  
config.status: executing po-directories commands  
config.status: creating po/POTFILES  
config.status: creating po/Makefile  

When I type make, it fails. I suspect that the problem is here:

checking for CFPreferencesCopyAppValue... no  
checking for CFLocaleCopyCurrent... no  
checking for GNU gettext in libc... no  

So, what packages are missing? Or is it another thing? Thanks anyway.

———————-EDIT————————-

I used ./configure --disable-nls and it works. So the problem is really gettext.

checking for GNU gettext in libc... no  

I already installed the gettext packages. Something missing? I have to fix this because the program main language is esperanto!

Answer 1

I’ve spent some time (probably too much) playing with this, and I’ve managed to get it to build.

On Ubuntu 12.04, it builds out of the box .tar.gz file with no problem, finding and using GNU gettext. On Cygwin, I get the same errors you do.

One difference is that on Cygwin, a program that uses gettext needs to be linked with -lintl; on Ubuntu, it doesn’t (apparently gettext is in the standard C library).

After some messing around with the configure script, I came up with the following workarounds:

First, set the environment variable $LIBS to "-lintl" before invoking ./configure.

Second, it appears that the Ubuntu library, but not the Cygwin library, provides an undocumented symbol _nl_domain_bindings, and the small test program generated by configure depends on that symbol. So I hacked the configure script, commenting out references to _nl_domain_bindings in the generated C test program.

Hacking configure is not the right way to fix this problem; the configure script is generated (before the sources are released) by other tools. You’d need someone familiar with GNU autoconf to come up with a better solution. And configure should be able to detect the need for the -lintl option on its own.

And here’s something really strange: the only occurrence of -lintl in the source tree is the following line in enc2ly-0.2/m4/gettext.m4 :

    LIBS=`echo " $LIBS " | sed -e 's/ -lintl / /' -e 's/^ //' -e 's/ $//'`

It’s modifying $LIBS by removing any occurrence of -lintl. If there’s some commentary that explains this, it’s probably in Esperanto. (Never thought I’d say that except as a joke.)

So I commented out that line, and it worked, generating an enc2ly.exe file that at least prints a usage message if I invoke it with no arguments:

$ /usr/local/apps/enc2ly-0.2/bin/enc2ly.exe 
Dosieroj sukcese procezitaj: 0 (domaĝe!)
$ 

Yes, that’s Esperanto; Google Translate translates it, not entirely successfully, to

Files successfully procezitaj: 0 (domaĝe!)

I kept my modifications ugly hacks in a local Git repository. Here’s the output of git diff:

diff --git a/configure b/configure
index 1605a50..8d1a1b7 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -5162,12 +5162,12 @@ else
 #include <libintl.h>
 $gt_revision_test_code
 extern int _nl_msg_cat_cntr;
-extern int *_nl_domain_bindings;
+/* extern int *_nl_domain_bindings; */
 int
 main ()
 {
 bindtextdomain ("", "");
-return * gettext ("")$gt_expression_test_code + _nl_msg_cat_cntr + *_nl_domain_bindings
+return * gettext ("")$gt_expression_test_code + _nl_msg_cat_cntr /* + *_nl_domain_bindings */
   ;
   return 0;
 }
diff --git a/m4/gettext.m4 b/m4/gettext.m4
index f84e6a5..6c77c3a 100644
--- a/m4/gettext.m4
+++ b/m4/gettext.m4
@@ -247,7 +247,7 @@ return * gettext ("")$gt_expression_test_code + _nl_msg_cat_cntr + *_nl_expand_a
         USE_INCLUDED_LIBINTL=yes
         LIBINTL="ifelse([$3],[],\${top_builddir}/intl,[$3])/libintl.[]gt_libtool_suffix_prefix[]a $LIBICONV $LIBTHREAD"
         LTLIBINTL="ifelse([$3],[],\${top_builddir}/intl,[$3])/libintl.[]gt_libtool_suffix_prefix[]a $LTLIBICONV $LTLIBTHREAD"
-        LIBS=`echo " $LIBS " | sed -e 's/ -lintl / /' -e 's/^ //' -e 's/ $//'`
+#       LIBS=`echo " $LIBS " | sed -e 's/ -lintl / /' -e 's/^ //' -e 's/ $//'`
       fi

       CATOBJEXT=

Grab enc2ly-0.2.tar.gz, unpack it, apply the above changes (easy enough to do manually), set the environment variable $LIBS to -lintl, build and install normally, and you should be good to go.

And you might want to contact the maintainers about this problem; I’m sure they’d like to implement a cleaner solution than this.