Re: Adding init-po and update-po targets to the meson build system

Hi,

On Wed, 7 Oct 2026 at 19:24, Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)kurilemu(dot)de> wrote:
>
> On 2026-Oct-07, Nazir Bilal Yavuz wrote:
>
> > So, my solution is switching to using nls.json files instead
> > of nls.mk files and having a Perl script so that the autoconf system
> > can parse these nls.json files and read them as nls.mk files as
> > before. So the big picture is:
> >
> > - We will switch nls.mk files with nls.json files.
> > - autoconf will read these nls.json files with the help of perl script.
> > - meson will read nls.json files and will use a helper Python script
> > to generate *.pot files.
> > - meson will have init-po and update-po targets and also singular
> > targes like psql-init-po.
>
> Hmm, so the source files would be .json and we generate .mk files as
> derivative artifacts? I don't know, that sounds potentially
> nightmarish. Isn't it more convenient to generate a JSON file from the
> nls.mk list instead?

Yes, I agree that it is kind of nightmarish. I considered both options
and chose to use JSON files because, AFAIK, we want to remove the
autoconf system and use meson in the future. So, using JSON files
makes more sense to me from a maintainability perspective for this
reason.

Perhaps it is better to generate JSON files from the nls.mk files for
now and switch later if needed.

--
Regards,
Nazir Bilal Yavuz
Microsoft