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diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5104f75 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +# Intro +gettext-tiny provides lightweight replacements for tools typically used +from the `GNU gettext` suite, which is incredibly bloated and takes +a lot of time to build (in the order of an hour on slow devices). +the most notable component is `msgfmt` which is used to create binary +translation files in the `.mo` format out of textual input files in +`.po` format. this is the most important tool for building software from +source, because it is used from the build processes of many software packages. + +our `msgfmt` implementation was initially a fake implementation that would +just output the english input string as the translation, which is sufficient +to get software to work, but it has since grown into a complete implementation. +unlike the GNU implementation, it can even expand input strings containing +so-called `sysdep` strings into a constant translation table. +`sysdep` strings were glued as an after-thought onto the GNU implementation to +deal with system-specific format strings, and in the GNU implementation those +are created at runtime, which requires mapping the entire `.mo` file into +read/write memory locations, thereby wasting precious RAM for read-only data +that could otherwise be shared among processes. + +other parts of gettext-tiny such as `xgettext` and `msgmerge` are still stubs, +but they are sufficient to build many packages. + +since `musl` libc, our preferred target, didn't provide a `libintl` in the past, +(and it's also part of `GNU gettext`) we also ship a no-op libintl providing +a header and a library. + +it comes in two flavours: + +1) nop: gettext functions just return the input string as translation +2) musl: a compat library providing a few compatibility symbols meant to be used + together with the libintl built-in into recent musl versions. + the compatibility symbols help to get past configure scripts that insist on + using only the GNU gettext suite. +additionally, it can be entirely disabled. + + +# Compilation/Installation + +``` +make LIBINTL=FLAVOR +make DESTDIR=pkgdir prefix=/ install +``` + +where FLAVOR can be one of NONE, MUSL, NOOP (as detailed above). +you can override any variables used in the Makefile (such as `CFLAGS`) by +appending them to the `make` invocation, or by saving them into a file called +`config.mak` before running `make`. |