Why remove i18n support for git?

[moonfruit]

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To help us debug your issue please explain:

• What you were trying to do (and why)

Use option --with-gettext to enable git i18n support.

• What happened (include command output)

Option --with-gettext has been deleted by f710a13

• What you expected to happen

Option --with-gettext worked like old times.

• Step-by-step reproduction instructions (by running brew install commands)

brew install git --with-gettext

[fxcoudert]

See #31799 and #31510 for background

[moonfruit]

An i18n version of git is very necessary, you should not delete the option --with-gettext.

Not every options should be deleted. Create a tap to add such a simple option --with-gettext and maintain the tap is so stupid.

[SMillerDev]

Out of ~81.000 installs in the last month, 16 were passing --with-gettext. I don't think it's reasonable to ask volunteers to maintain that low a usage, just because you think maintaining it yourself is "so stupid"

[DomT4]

I won't comment on the option removal here but git is a quick build & hosting a version of the formula in a tap yourself is extremely easy; that formula has taken me less than 15-20 minutes so far to create & maintain, for something that I use dozens of time a day at the bare minimum.

[chdiza]

I don't think it's reasonable to ask volunteers to maintain that low a usage

There's no maintaining. It just sits there, untested by CI or put into bottles. It's not hurting anything.

[SMillerDev]

Closing this as comments on the decision to remove options are better directed at the original PR or Issue.

[moonfruit]

You guys can not just remove --with-gettext because of that only some people needs it.

That I know git's i18n is pretty well. And English is not my native language, git's i18n help me a lot.

I think why that rare people install git with --gettext, because they don't know there is such a thing.

And I know that other prebuild git build with i18n by default, like git's official website and wandisco git.

I still insist do not remove --with-gettext.

If you don't like this option, why not build with i18n as default like git official website, and add a option --without-gettext, then you can see that how many people build git with --without-gettext.

@SMillerDev @DomT4 @chdiza

[SMillerDev]

You could make a pull request to add it as a parameter that's always used.

[dreambottle]

I assume, this change is the reason why I started noticing this
https://public-inbox.org/git/CAKd-JgRgrJXNVyxsD-cg-TJsXu0K35tv5cSDjbsYNXCiu1j0hg@mail.gmail.com/T/

[fxcoudert]

If the issue is getting reported and fixed upstream, this is good news!

[sunshineco]

The issue is not being fixed upstream (in Git) because it's not specific to Git. The same behavior is observed in other commands installed by brew (for instance, wget). So, the problem may be specific to how gettext is built by brew or may be deeper and have to do with MacOS itself. Either way, it probably deserves more investigation.

[fxcoudert]

Homebrew does not do anything specific with gettext. However, it is weird, because my languages are set up in macOS so that 1 = French, 2 = English, and I correctly get the French messages from gettext-linked apps.

[sunshineco]

Indeed, the problem is specific to English being the first language, as if it's somehow special-cased to be ignored. It could be some underlying Apple API doing the special-casing upon which gettext is built (I haven't delved into it) or perhaps something is broken in gettext itself.

[fxcoudert]

Look at gettext-0.19.8.1/gettext-runtime/gnulib-lib/localename.c, it has some macOS-specific code (search for Mac OS or __APPLE__). But it looks okay to me…

[storoj]

I totally agree with @moonfruit that removing --with-gettext option was a mistake. But another mistake happened and gettext support became mandatory. It affects badly if your system has one or more languages. For example, I have en_RU locale and my git output became Russian. That's not an option for me and I can't help with it in a normal way. I don't want to use LC_LANG=en_US in my bash_profile because it will affect everything in my system, I don't want to make an alias like git="LC_LANG=en_US git" either.

Another point to return --with-gettext back is the way git supports i18n. According to INSTALL (https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/INSTALL) the only way to use English is exactly NO_GETTEXT flag enabled. Otherwise, po/${lang}.po (https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/po) files will be used to determine available languages. As you see, that directory does not contain "en.po" file. And if you are running git with gettext support and en_RU locale, gettext will look for following files: share/locale/{en_RU,en,ru_RU,ru}/LC_MESSAGES/git.mo. It finally finds "ru" one and uses Russian language for output which is totally unusable. I don't have any piece of development software localized in Russian.

With all the above I insist on returning --with-gettext flag back because it is the only way (designed by git authors) to use English localisation in multi-language system.

[odnoletkov]

I agree that current situation is undesirable for many users and hard to work around. Many people do specify a secondary non-en language and get an unexpected git localisation not in accordance with their preference. I think amount of people affected greatly exceeds amount of people preferring to use localised git. Until upstream supports better configuration this should be reverted back to an option for those who actually want localisation.

[fxcoudert]

• There is a known workaround: specifying a locale with environment variables.
• Has a bug report being filed against git, gettext, or both?

[sunshineco]

Has a bug report being filed against git, gettext, or both?

Mentioned earlier, the issue was reported to Git, but it was observed that the problem was not specific to that project; wget installed by brew also experiences it, for example.

(It's possible, I suppose, that git and wget are both mis-using gettext in some way, in which case suggesting an appropriate fix to those projects would make sense.)

[sunshineco]

It seems this problem isn't new, and certainly isn't specific to Git. A similar report was made against nano two years ago (but, apparently, never resolved).

[auduchinok]

Has a bug report being filed against git, gettext, or both?

The sad thing is it works perfectly in git bundled in Xcode tools and other distributions, with this combination of system language and locales (the same as @storoj has). It used to work in brew as well but now I just had to uninstall it and reverted to the system one.