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14 The Installer’s and Distributor’s View

By default, packages fully using GNU gettext, internally, are installed in such a way as to allow translation of messages. At configuration time, those packages should automatically detect whether the underlying host system already provides the GNU gettext functions. If not, the GNU gettext library should be automatically prepared and used. Installers may use special options at configuration time for changing this behavior. The command ‘./configure --with-included-gettext’ bypasses system gettext to use the included GNU gettext instead, while ‘./configure --disable-nls’ produces programs totally unable to translate messages.

Internationalized packages have usually many ll.po files. Unless translations are disabled, all those available are installed together with the package. However, the environment variable LINGUAS may be set, prior to configuration, to limit the installed set. LINGUAS should then contain a space separated list of two-letter codes, stating which languages are allowed.