On 9/28/25 10:36 AM, W. Kosior wrote: >> If that practice is so long-standing and so widespread, should we >> perhaps document it in the GNU coding standards? To have it >> solely in the gettext documentation risks leaving some GNU developers >> unaware of it. >> >> What do people think? > > I don't think it would be useful, because > > 1. Developers who use gettext are likely to learn about the practice > from the gettext doc and developers who don't use gettext have > little need to know about the practice. > > 2. Documenting the practice in the standards would make sense if GNU > were to mandate it for all packages. But creating such rule would > bring little benefit and just cause nuisance.
I'm of the opposite opinion. I think it is strange for the reference for some aspect of the GDB (and many other projects) coding style to be the gettext documentation. The gettext documentation may suggest doing it this way, but GNU projects don't follow the gettext documentation for their coding style, they follow the GNU coding standard. I think it makes perfect sense for gettext to document the canonical style for what it implements, not all GNU projects need/want/use gettext, so adding that to the GCS is an over head. The GCS could have a cross refernce to the GNU gettext manual though. The GCS is a general coding style, literally no GNU project uses what is written, and deviate from it quite strongly .. since it is not enforacble.
