Installing glib gives "You must have either have gettext support"

Question

I'm trying to install glib-2.37.6 (also same problem with glib-2.32.1) and getting this error during configuration:

You must have either have gettext support in your C library, or use the GNU gettext library. (http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/gettext.html

I previously built gettext, though. To clarify, I'm trying to build a number of things (leading up to gtk+) without actually installing in the usual places, since this is a machine others use; instead, I'm using --prefix= to put everything in a work directory under my home directory.

I tried looking at the logs to see if I could get a clue about whether I needed to set anything else. I also tried looking at the configure script, although I'm not an expert on autoconf. What I found was that the error occurred because gt_cv_have_gettext wasn't set to yes. So then I looked for where it was supposed to get set, so that I could tell what file or whatever it was checking for. But unless I'm missing something, the only command that would set it to yes is underneath this if:

  if test "$gt_cv_func_dgettext_libc" != "yes" \
     || test "$gt_cv_func_ngettext_libc" != "yes" \
     || test "$ac_cv_func_bind_textdomain_codeset" != "yes" ; then

The config.log (looking at the configure line numbers) indicates that the condition was false, so everything inside (including the command to set gt_cv_have_gettext) was skipped. But the test seems to check that none of three things are missing. And none of them are; here's one of the last segments of config.log right before the error:

configure:7982: checking for ngettext in libc
configure:8000: gcc -o conftest -g -O2   conftest.c  >&5
configure:8000: $? = 0
configure:8009: result: yes
configure:8013: checking for dgettext in libc
configure:8031: gcc -o conftest -g -O2   conftest.c  >&5
configure:8031: $? = 0
configure:8040: result: yes
configure:8047: checking for bind_textdomain_codeset
configure:8047: gcc -o conftest -g -O2   conftest.c  >&5
configure:8047: $? = 0
configure:8047: result: yes
configure:8323: checking for msgfmt

(The line that would set gt_cv_have_gettext is somewhere between 8047 and 8323.) So unless I'm missing something, it looks as though if all these three things--ngettext, dgettext, bind_textdomain_codeset--are present (or succeed, or something), then an error will result.

So what am I missing? Is there some other option that needs to be set, or something else wrong with my configuration? Or did I find an error in the configure script? Thanks for any help. I wanted to ask in a forum like this before submitting it as a bug report.

Answer 1

OK, I think I figured it out. Since I was "installing" everything in a directory under my home directory, I needed to add the "bin" subdirectory of the --prefix directory to my $PATH before running configure. That made it find msgfmt and, I think, got it around the error.

Answer 2

how to add the "bin" subdirectory of the --prefix directory to my $PATH before running configure. That made it find msgfmt and, I think, got it around the error.